Blackberry phones have starte pouring into India, but theres a catch you need to buy your Blackberry only from the Operators, a selling strategy totally new to Indians and couple it with the fact unlike US, the Mobile Operators dont give you any rebates, rather they price it much higher. Now compare it with Nokia’s E Series phones, sold across the country in most Mobile stores, and backed by Nokia Service network.
I had the oppurtunity of using Blackberries in US and felt their build was not as solid as the Nokia’s succesful E61i, but the fact which made Blackberry a big hit in US was the Blackberry Connect/Push Email. In India most companies dont support Push Email, most of them support Exchange Servers (from Microsoft) and Both Nokia and Blackberry do pretty much the same in terms of handling Pop/SMTP emails and Exchange Servers. So Blackberry apart from the name really doesnt add much to the Indian Customers.
Add to that Nokia’s popularity and resale values, you can expect very few to go and pick a blackberry ahead of a Nokia ESeries Phone. Then you got a load of free apps for Symbian compared to Blackberry adding so much to the usability the Nokia Phones.
With E71 Nokia probably has the best designed and refined QWERTY keyboard phone its hard to see how Blackberry can put one across the Nokia.
[ps: Now dont come n tell me Blackberry is so successful in US, the fact is Nokia doesnt have any deal with Mobile operators for subsidising its phones. This is the main selling point for US, no one pays the full price of any phone there. The model is very different in other countries]