A full-page ad in The Economist this week features a photo of an actual-size BlackBerry, smack in the middle of the sheet. But the advertisement wasn’t taken out by RIM for its business-minded smart phone. Instead, it is promoting the Middle Eastern nation of Bahrain. The BlackBerry’s screen declares: “Bahrain has the most liberal telecoms market in the Gulf.”The ad, which follows the magazine’s contents page and may have cost up to $182,250 based on The Economist’s rate charts, plays off recent fears that BlackBerry service could get shut down in two other Gulf states. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates both say their governments need to be able to intercept messages in order to prevent terrorist attacks. RIM originally balked at giving the governments the encryption keys, despite threats from the two countries to shut off service.To read this Newsweek report in full, see:
www.newsweek.com/2010/08/23/bahrain-to-world-blackberrys-welcome.html