Bad days don’t seem to be ending for RIM. With the Indonesian government forcing RIM to censor internet on its devices, the long hassle between the Indian government and RIM has come to an end (sort of).
The Indian government, which fears that the heavy encryption on RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones makes them convenient for terrorists to use undetected, had asked RIM to grant access to its messenger services before Jan 31, 2011. According to WSJ:
“The lawful access capability now available to RIM’s carrier partners meets the standard required by the government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace,” RIM said in a customer update seen by Dow Jones Newswires.
“No changes can be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server [corporate email] customers since, contrary to any rumors, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers’ encryption keys,” RIM’s customer update said.
“RIM continues to work closely with the government and RIM’s carrier partners in India…We are pleased to have delivered a solution well before a mutually agreed milestone date of January 31, 2011,” RIM said.
Nokia had to face a similar decision in December 2011 after which it provided the Indian government with access to the Nokia Messaging service.
As the world’s fastest-growing telecommunications market, India is crucial to smartphone makers. More than 40% of Indian customers are corporate email users, analysts say.
India’s smartphone market is expected to grow to about 40 million by the end of 2015 from about 10 million at the end of 2010, according to a forecast by Informa Telecoms & Media.
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