Blackberry is not as popular in Hong Kong as it is in America.

First, I have to apologize for this late blog post. I am sorry. Okay, let me get back to my first cultural object blog post!

This is what I have been noticing since I have been studying abroad in American: Blackberry is not as popular as it is in America.

When I was an exchange student at Shakopee, Minnesota, I had to get a phone so that I can call my friends and my host family could call me. So I asked my host parents to take me to a carrier store so that I could get a phone. As far as I remember, it was my first time seeing phones like Blackberry and phones with qwerty keyboard. Some looked cool, some did not. I quickly realized a pretty major cultural different in network gadget, especially cell phones. Americans compose words and sentences with english letters, so it is better and convenience for them to have a qwerty keyboard, instead of having three letters on each button, like old-style phones do. But Chinese don't compose words and sentences with english letters, Chinese do that with "lines" (I do know know what it should be called in English). So it explains why Blackberry is not as popular in Hong Kong as it is in America, although phones with qwerty keyboard are getting more popular nowadays.

Another cultural different of carrier or cell phone industry I noticed was that when I wanted to get a specific cell phone, I had to sign a at least one-year contract, which was pretty expensive. If I did not want that contract and of course I did not want that because I only stayed there for ten months, I would have to get whatever I want to get on the web like Amazon etc. Unlike America, we have more than plenty of stores that sell electronic gadgets like cell phones, MP3 players, laptops, digital cameras etc, which I think it's much better because I can go with a lot cheaper phone plan. 

Below is a web link to one of the most famous electronic gadgets stores in Hong Kong. You will see it has a lot of more choices of cell phone, in the meanwhile, you can see how Chinese words are composed with "lines".

http://www.broadway.com.hk/