The Bold was announced today for a release via Taiwan Mobile, starting early November. The keyboard of this Bold for Taiwan is a "hybrid QWERTY-BoPoMoFo" one, enhanced for Chinese input. Meaning that, besides the ordinary characters and the alphanumeric symbols, it also features Chinese characters, which have an orange color and are situated in the down-right side of the keys.
Taiwan Mobile's BlackBerry Bold further supports Simplified Chinese with Pinyin, CangJie and WuBiHua, as well as Traditional Chinese with Jyutping and CangJie. All these features are meant to allow Taiwanese users to browse Chinese websites and write/read Chinese e-mails.
The retail price of BlackBerry Bold from Taiwan Mobile is of 21,500 NT$ ($662). Together with a BlackBerry Internet Service data plan, users can get the smartphone for as low as 11,500 NT$, while corporate users can have it even for less: 6,500 NT$, if they subscribe to an unlimited BlackBerry Enterprise Server plan.
I wonder, if now a Chinese-language-friendly BlackBerry Bold exists, does it mean RIM will try to launch the smartphone in mainland China too? This is yet to be seen.
To preorder a BlackBerry Bold from Taiwan Mobile, just hit the carrier's web page dedicated to the new smartphone.
