Writing in Wireless Watch Japan, commentator Daniel Skuka quickly dismisses the impact of BlackBerry's move into Japan this fall.

That would be through Japanese wireless services provider DoCoMo.

His objections seem to center on the reality that since pretty much everyone in Japan has a phone anyway, there is little incentive for enterprises to invest in BlackBerry solutions.

I don't know about that. Pretty much everyone has a phone here in North America as well, but that doesn't prevent enterprises investing in BlackBerry solutions that not only offer a phone-but quite a bit more.

First, consider that one of the reasons why corporate IT departments have had little success in getting carriers to offer bundled enterprise mobile solutions is that, since the start of i-mode, virtually everyone in Japan's workforce already has an always-on, fully connected email device right in their back pocket - in other words, a phone!

In Japan, all other-than-basic mobile phones offer full access to email (under the carrier's domain) and there are a plethora of third-party services available that will allow a corporate IT department to push out company mail via a proxy server straight to i-mode, EZweb or v-live handsets.

Skuka's more solid point, IMHO, is that at least at the start, Japanese BlackBerry's won't offer Japanese language character input.

'How stupid it would be to launch a device in the US," he writes, "or Canada (RIM's home market), that couldn't handle English input? "

Well, yea?