Indonesians Still Love Their BlackBerrys

For Sanuri, a customer service technician at a Jakarta electronics chain, buying a phone is a big decision. The 28-year-old father of one (who like many Indonesians has only one name) makes about $ 160 a month, minimum wage in the Indonesian capital. But like many Jakarta residents, he’s willing to spend more for an impressive-looking phone. Last year he decided to get rid of his old Nokia (NOK) in favor of a $ 440 BlackBerry Torch. To finance it, he had to get a loan from his employer.

The phone was worth the expense, says Sanuri, who relies on the free BlackBerry Messenger service to keep in touch with colleagues and schedule client visits. “Everyone knows what the others are doing,” he says. Even though Indonesian retailers are offering more alternatives to BlackBerry, Sanuri isn’t switching. “There are more benefits I can get from BlackBerry,” he says.

While smartphone users around the world are tossing their BlackBerrys and buying Google’s (GOOG) Android-powered phones and Apple’s (AAPL) iPhones, Indonesia remains a rare bright spot for Research In Motion (RIMM). The global market share for the Waterloo (Ont.)-based company’s smartphones fell to just 4.3 percent in the third quarter of this year, down from 9.5 percent in the same quarter of 2011, according to market research firm IDC. Yet in Indonesia, the BlackBerry operating system accounts for 37 percent of the market. RIM is still losing ground there, just not as quickly as elsewhere (in 2011, BlackBerrys accounted for 43 percent of the market). Android is now the top operating system, but BlackBerry remains ahead of the 2.5 percent share for No. 3 Apple iOS, thanks largely to the dominance of BBM. Indonesians also like RIM’s low-cost BlackBerry Internet Service plans such as BIS Social and BIS Lite that offer access to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook (FB) for as little as $ 4.69 a month.

“Any retailer has to have BlackBerry,” says Ryota Inaba, chief executive officer of Rakuten Belanja Online, an e-commerce joint venture of Japanese online retailer Rakuten and Global Mediacom (BMTR), Indonesia’s biggest media company. Indonesia “is the market for RIM.” Inaba is a BlackBerry user himself, albeit a reluctant one. “I don’t like using BlackBerry, to be honest,” he says. But few of Inaba’s 40 staff members have high-end smartphones and a lot of them don’t even use e-mail, preferring instead to chat over BBM. “BlackBerry is the fastest way to communicate,” says Inaba, who sends about 20 instant messages a day via the BBM service.

Indonesia isn’t as coveted a market as China or India, but it does have the world’s fourth-largest population (some 242 million people), and its economy is expected to increase more than 6 percent this year. RIM clearly views it as a market worth protecting. Singapore-based spokesman Benjamin Chelliah says RIM is “currently investigating” launching a new money transfer system for its Indonesian BBM platform. RIM is also trying to foster Indonesia’s growing app developer community. In October, RIM opened a BlackBerry Innovation Center at the Bandung Institute of Technology to provide scholarships and other financial support to young engineers working on BlackBerry mobile apps; the same month, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins traveled to Jakarta to promote the brand.

In late November, RIM hosted a two-day conference for app developers in Bangkok, part of a campaign to build interest ahead of the January launch of its new operating system, BlackBerry 10. Regional managing director Urpo Karjalainen told attendees that RIM is “absolutely committed” to Asian markets, and that its “unique BlackBerry service has been the foundation of our success here.”

Fending off competition and slowing its market share slide won’t be easy. Google’s Android operating system has been making significant inroads into Southeast Asia. Samsung has been the main beneficiary, with its smartphone market share doubling from a year ago to 40 percent. RIM’s share across the region is now 14 percent, down from 18 percent in 2011. Nokia is taking aim at Indonesia too, announcing on Dec. 4 the launch of two Lumia smartphones using Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system.

In response, RIM and retailers are offering cheaper BlackBerrys priced around $ 100. “There’s going to be a little bit of an OS war,” says Sudev Bangah, country manager in Jakarta for IDC. As that fight heats up, aggressive pricing and new BBM services will allow “RIM to reinvent itself in a market it cannot afford to lose.”

The new operating system will probably have limited impact on Indonesians in rural areas, who prefer cheaper phones. But for the upscale market, a pricey new BlackBerry might draw interest in Jakarta, where people “are willing to spend a little bit more,” says Bangah, who expects the new OS to boost BlackBerry shipments next year. In Indonesia, at least, RIM’s not finished yet.

The bottom line: Even in Indonesia, where they’re still popular, BlackBerrys are losing ground, going from 43 percent of the market last year to 37 percent.

With Harry Suhartono

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North Korea’s new leader burnishes credentials with rocket

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) – North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to its opponents.

The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labeled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far as the continental United States.

“The satellite has entered the planned orbit,” a North Korean television news-reader clad in traditional Korean garb triumphantly announced, after which the station played patriotic songs with the lyrics “Chosun (Korea) does what it says”.

The rocket was launched just before 10 a.m. Korea time (9 p.m. ET on Tuesday), according to defense officials in South Korea and Japan, and easily surpassed a failed April launch that flew for less than two minutes.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said that it “deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit”, the first time an independent body has verified North Korean claims.

North Korea followed what it said was a similar successful launch in 2009 with a nuclear test that prompted the United Nations Security Council to stiffen sanctions that it originally imposed in 2006 after the North’s first nuclear test.

The state is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions, although Kim Jong-un, the youthful head of state who took power a year ago, is believed to have continued the state’s “military first” programs put into place by his deceased father Kim Jong-il.

North Korea lauded Wednesday’s launch as celebrating the prowess of all three Kims to rule since it was founded in 1948.

“At a time when great yearnings and reverence for Kim Jong-il pervade the whole country, its scientists and technicians brilliantly carried out his behests to launch a scientific and technological satellite in 2012, the year marking the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung,” its KCNA news agency said.

Washington condemned Wednesday’s launch as a “provocative action” and breach of U.N. rules, while Japan’s U.N. envoy called for a Security Council meeting. However, diplomats say further tough sanctions are unlikely to be agreed at the body as China, the North’s only major ally, will oppose them.

“The international community must work in a concerted fashion to send North Korea a clear message that its violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions have consequences,” the White House said in a statement.

Japan’s likely next prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is leading in opinion polls ahead of an election on December 16 and who is known as a North Korea hawk, called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution “strongly criticizing” Pyongyang.

BEIJING BLOCK

China had expressed “deep concern” prior to the launch which was announced a day after a top politburo member, representing new Chinese leader Xi Xinping, met Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang.

On Wednesday its tone was measured, regretting the launch but calling for restraint on possible counter-measures, in line with previous policy when it has effectively vetoed tougher sanctions.

“China believes the Security Council’s response should be cautious and moderate, protect the overall peaceful and stable situation on the Korean peninsula, and avoid an escalation of the situation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told journalists.

Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, told a conference call: “China has been the stumbling block to firmer U.N. action and we’ll have to see if the new leadership is any different than its predecessors.”

A senior adviser to South Korea’s president said last week it was unlikely there would be action from the U.N. and that Seoul would expect its allies to tighten sanctions unilaterally.

Kim Jong-un, believed to be 29 years old, took power when his father died on December 17 last year and experts believe the launch was intended to commemorate the first anniversary of the death.

The April launch was timed for the centennial of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of its current ruler.

Wednesday’s success puts the North ahead of the South which has not managed to get a rocket off the ground.

“This is a considerable boost in establishing the rule of Kim Jong-un,” said Cho Min, an expert at the Korea Institute of National Unification.

There have been few indications the secretive and impoverished state, where the United Nations estimates a third of the population is malnourished, has made any advances in opening up economically over the past year.

North Korea remains reliant on minerals exports to China and remittances from tens of thousands of its people working on labor projects overseas.

The 22 million population often needs handouts from defectors who have escaped to South Korea in order to afford basic medicines.

Given the puny size of its economy – per capita income is less than $ 2,000 a year – one of the few ways the North can attract world attention is by emphasizing its military threat.

Pyongyang wants the United States to resume aid and to recognize it diplomatically, although the April launch scuppered a planned food deal.

It is believed to be some years away from developing a functioning nuclear warhead although it may have enough plutonium for around half a dozen nuclear bombs, according to nuclear experts.

The North has also been enriching uranium, which would give it a second path to nuclear weapons as it sits on vast natural uranium reserves.

“A successful launch puts North Korea closer to the capability to deploy a weaponized missile,” said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

“But this would still require fitting a weapon to the missile and ensuring a reasonable degree of accuracy. The North Koreans probably do not yet have a nuclear weapon small enough for a missile to carry.”

Pyongyang says that its development is part of a civil nuclear program, but has also boasted of it being a “nuclear weapons power”.

(Additional reporting by Jumin Park and Yoo Choonsik in SEOUL; David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Linda Sieg in TOKYO; Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING; Rosmarie Francisco in MANILA; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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This Kid Dances Better Than a Cheerleader

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

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So we were ready to toss this video aside after the first few seconds. Our thinking: we have seen way more “Gangnam Style” videos than we ever wanted to … but, we’re glad we stayed for the whole thing. 

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In the coming weeks nerds will proclaim that you will need to see The Hobbit despite its terrible reviews. When they do, and they will, just show them this trailer and its really solid Sean Bean theorem: 

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So this is Frank Ocean singing Radiohead (quite well). And this is also the video which you should have handy the next time your boss catches you YouTubing that terrible (but really great) Ke$ ha song. 

Old dogs, new tricks? 

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‘Evita’ to close in January when Big 3 leave

NEW YORK (AP) — The Broadway revival of “Evita” — faced with trying to replace Ricky Martin, Elena Roger and Michael Cerveris — will instead close when the Big Three leave early next year.

Producers of the Tony Award-nominated revival of Tim Rice‘s and Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s landmark musical said Tuesday night they have decided against plans for an open-ended run after Martin, Roger and Cerveris leave after the Jan. 26 performance.

“Our extensive search for a new cast presented the significant challenges of not only replacing a high-caliber trio of stars but also synchronizing the schedules of potential replacements with that of the production,” producer Hal Luftig said in a statement. “Despite going down the road with a variety of artists, the planets have simply not aligned for us to engage the right talent at the right time.”

When it closes, the musical will have played 26 previews and 337 performances, far less than the original’s more than 1,580 shows played between 1979 and 1983.

A national tour will launch in September 2013 at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, R.I., and a cast album has been released, including the songs “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” and “High Flying Adored.” The cast for the tour has not been announced.

The revival opened March 12 at the Marquis Theatre, directed by Michael Grandage and choreographed by Rob Ashford. It has broken the theater’s box office record seven times, though has seen the box office slump at times.

Last week, it pulled in $ 920,994, or a little more than half its $ 1,666,936 potential. The average ticket price was $ 111.73 and the top premium went for $ 275.

The musical tells the story of Argentina’s Eva Peron, who rose from the slums to the presidential mansion. Roger plays Eva, Cerveris her husband and Martin is Che.

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Online: http://evitaonbroadway.com

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Cardiome to pay $20 million, settle debt deal with Merck

(Reuters) – Cardiome Pharma Corp said it will pay former partner Merck & Co $ 20 million by March 31 to settle debt obligations related to a licensing deal for a heart drug.

Shares of Cardiome jumped as much as 51 percent to 37 Canadian cents on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday. Its U.S.-listed shares also rose 52 percent on the Nasdaq.

The company said in September that Merck returned the global marketing and development rights for intravenous and oral versions of their heart drug, six months after dropping the development of the oral version.

The drug vernakalant is an experimental treatment for chronic atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder that can lead to stroke and heart failure.

Cardiome, which had a cash balance of $ 53.6 million at the end of September, owed Merck $ 50 million. Merck had granted Cardiome an interest-bearing credit facility of up to $ 100 million.

The companies signed the collaboration and licensing agreement for vernakalant in April 2009.

“Complete resolution of our $ 50 million debt obligation to Merck removes a significant financial and operational overhang for Cardiome,” said William Hunter, interim CEO of Cardiome, which develops drugs for diseases of the heart and circulatory system.

The settlement will terminate the credit facility and will release and discharge the collateral security taken in respect of the advances under the line of credit, Cardiome said in a statement.

Brokerage firm Canaccord Genuity raised its price target on the stock to 40 cents from 35 cents.

(Reporting by Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)

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Oil edges up ahead of US central bank meeting

BANGKOK (AP) — Oil prices edged up Tuesday despite growing uncertainty about the strength of China‘s economic recovery as investors looked to the Federal Reserve to implement new measures to help the U.S. economy.

Benchmark crude for January delivery was up 23 cents to $ 85.80 per barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 37 cents to close at $ 85.56 per barrel on the Nymex on Monday.

Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, was up 33 cents per barrel to $ 107.66 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

The Fed, which begins a two-day policy meeting later Tuesday, is widely expected to say it will start buying more long-term Treasurys to replace a program that expires at year’s end.

Under the expiring “Operation Twist” program, the Fed has sold short-term Treasurys and used the proceeds to buy $ 45 billion a month in long-term Treasurys, which is a way of “twisting” long-term rates lower, relative to short-term rates.

Meanwhile, an abrupt fall in China’s export growth and slowing import growth suggests that the recovery in the world’s No. 2 economy is faltering, analysts at Capital Economics said in a report.

The data “have added to our doubts about the strength and sustainability of China’s rebound,” the report said. “The weekend’s figures on investment, retail sales and industrial production were more encouraging but they underlined that recent strength has been driven by infrastructure spending rather than a broad-based pick-up across the economy.”

Markets are also awaiting this week’s meeting in Vienna of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which produces about a third of the world’s oil supply.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

— Heating oil rose 1.5 cents at $ 2.912 a gallon.

— Natural gas fell 1.6 cents to $ 3.444 per 1,000 cubic feet.

— Wholesale gasoline rose 0.7 cents to $ 2.605 a gallon.

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Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

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Australian prank call radio to donate profits to nurse’s family

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.

Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.

The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.

“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.

“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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US designates Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra front a ‘terrorist’ group at lightning speed

The US State Department designated the Jabhat al-Nusra militia fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria a foreign terrorist organization today.

The speed with which the US government moved to designate a fairly new group that has never attacked US interests and is engaged in fighting a regime that successive administrations have demonized is evidence of the strange bedfellows and overlapping agendas that make the Syrian civil war so explosive.

The State Department says Jabhat al-Nusra (or the “Nusra Front“) is essentially a wing of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the jihadi group that flourished in Anbar Province after the US invaded to topple the Baathist regime of secular dictator Saddam Hussein. During the Iraq war, Sunni Arab tribesmen living along the Euphrates in eastern Syria flocked to fight with the friends and relatives in the towns along the Euphrates river in Anbar Province.

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The terrain, both actual and human, is similar on both sides of that border, and the rat lines that kept foreign fighters and money flowing into Iraq from Syria work just as well in reverse. Now, the jihadis who fought and largely lost against the Shiite political ascendancy in Iraq are flocking to eastern Syria to repay a debt of gratitude in a battle that looks more likely to succeed every day.

The Nusra Front has gone from victory to victory in eastern Syria and has shown signs of both significant funding and greater military prowess than the average citizens’ militia, with veterans of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya among its numbers.

The US of course aided the fight in Libya to bring down Muammar Qaddafi. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the chance to fight and kill Americans was the major drawing card.

In Iraq, the US toppled a Baathist dictatorship dominated by Sunni Arabs, opening the door for the political dominance of Iraq’s Shiite Arab majority and the fury of the country’s Sunni jihadis. In Syria, a Baathist regime dominated by the tiny Alawite sect (a long-ago offshoot of Shiite Islam) risks being brought down by the Sunni majority. Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in the odd position of now rooting for a Baathist regime to survive, frightened that a religiously inspired Sunni regime may replace Assad and potentially destabilize parts of his country from Haditha in Anbar’s far west to the northern city of Mosul.

For the US, the situation is more complicated still. The Obama administration appears eager for Assad to fall, but is also afraid of what might replace him, not least because of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. If the regime collapses, the aftermath is sure to be chaotic, much as it was in Libya, where arms stores were looted throughout the country. The presence of VX and sarin nerve gas, and the fear of Al Qaeda aligned militants getting their hands on it, has the US considering sending in troops to secure the weapons.

That’s the context in which today’s designation was made – part of an overall effort to shape the Syrian opposition to US liking, and hopefully have influence in the political outcome if and when Assad’s regime collapses. But while the US has been trying to find a government or leadership in waiting among Syrian exiles, Nusra has been going from strength to strength. Aaron Zelin, who tracks jihadi groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes in a recent piece for Foreign Policy that 20 out of the 48 “martyrdom” notices posted on Al Qaeda forums for the Syria war were made by people claiming to be members of Nusra.

Zelin writes that it’s highly unusual for the US to designate as a terrorist group anyone who hasn’t attempted an attack on the US. In fact, the US only designated the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, which had been involved in attacks on US troops there for over a decade, this September.

His guess as to why the US took such an unusual step?

The U.S. administration, in designating Jabhat al-Nusra, is likely to argue that the group is an outgrowth of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). While there is not much open-source evidence of this, classified material may offer proof — and there is certainly circumstantial evidence that Jabhat al-Nusra operates as a branch of the ISI.

Getting Syria’s rebels to disavow Jabhat al-Nusra may not be an easy task, however. As in Iraq, jihadists have been some of the most effective and audacious fighters against the Assad regime, garnering respect from other rebel groups in the process. Jabhat al-Nusra seems to have learned from the mistakes of al Qaeda in Iraq: It has not attacked civilians randomly, nor has it shown wanton disregard for human life by publicizing videos showing the beheading of its enemies. Even if its views are extreme, it is getting the benefit of the doubt from other insurgents due to its prowess on the battlefield.

Will it hurt the group’s support inside Syria? It’s hard to see how. The US hasn’t formally explained its logic yet, but it’s hard to see how that will matter either. The rebellion against Assad has raged for almost two years now and the country’s fighters are eager for victory, and revenge. The US has done little to militarily assist the rebellion, and fighters have been happy to take support where they can get it.

Most of the money or weapons flowing into the country for rebels has come from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and some of that support, of course, has ended up in the hands of Islamist militias like Nusra.

Usually the US doesn’t like support flowing to its designated terrorist organizations, and leans on countries like Saudi Arabia to cut off support. But in this case, a doctrinaire enforcement of its will could look like helping Assad (who has insisted everyone fighting his government is a terrorist since long before Nusra even existed).

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“The Colbert Report” mames new co-executive producer, head writer

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “The Colbert Report” has promoted former supervising producer and head writer Barry Julien to co-executive producer, series host, writer and executive producer Stephen Colbert said Monday. In addition to Jullien’s promotion, Opus Moreschi, previously a writer for the series, has been moved up to head writer on the Comedy Central news-show spoof.

Julien joined “The Colbert Report” as a writer in 2007, moving to head writer in 2009 and picking up the supervising producer title last year. Moreschi came aboard the show in 2008.

“Barry Julien and Opus Moreschi are tireless, visionary producers and incredibly talented writers,” Colbert said of the promotions. “For instance they wrote this sentence.”

Both Julien and Moreschi have won Writers Guild Awards and Emmy Awards during their “Colbert Report” stints.

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More Than Half of Hispanic Coloradans Lack Dental Insurance

The organization Colorado Trust reported on Monday that the results of a new Colorado Health Access Survey shows that more than half of Hispanics in the state do not have dental insurance. The overall number of people in the state without dental insurance grew 17 percent in in two years. Here are the details.

* The results of the 2011 Colorado Health Access Survey, released this month, show that 52.8 percent of Hispanic Coloradans lack dental insurance. This is higher than the rate of uninsured white Coloradans, at 39.1 percent, and black Coloradans, at 29.9 percent.

* The number of Hispanic Coloradans without dental care increased by 11 percent from 2008-09 to 2011, the survey showed.

* Among both kindergarten and third-grade children, the survey stated, more Hispanic children have at least one cavity than black or white children. The prevalence of untreated tooth decay is higher among Hispanic children in the state.

* According to Colorado Trust, having dental insurance is associated with seeking and receiving dental care. In 2011, 76.9 percent of the people who had dental insurance visited a dental professional. That number declined to 44.5 percent among those without insurance.

* Some factors affecting dental care besides insurance status include costs for services not covered by insurance and a lack of dental providers in rural areas of the state, Colorado Trust reported.

* The study found that Coloradans were more likely to forego dental care due to cost than any other type of care.

* Seniors 65 and older made up the age group most likely to not have dental insurance in Colorado, according to the study. Those living in rural areas were the least likely to visit a dental professional.

* Around 2.1 million people in the state did not have dental insurance in 2011, including 36.3 percent of the employed, working-age adults in the state. 18.6 percent of employed, working-age adults in Colorado lacked health insurance in 2011.

* Colorado Medicaid limits dental benefits to enrollees age 20 and younger, and traditional Medicare does not provide a dental benefit, the study stated.

* “Oral health care should not be considered optional or a luxury,” said Ned Calonge, M.D., President and CEO of The Colorado Trust. “Going without basic dental care often leads to oral disease with unnecessary pain, more invasive care and higher costs, and can result in even bigger health problems.”

* The 2011 Colorado Health Access Survey was conducted through random telephone interviews with members of 10,352 households across the state.

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