The poor BlackBerry Bold. This device has not had an easy life. The latest chapter in the Bold's saga comes from Japan, where is has been pulled from store shelves by NTT DoCoMo due to overheating issues.The Bold only recently went on sale in Japan, and, according to Reuters, DoCoMo has only sold about 4,000 of them. Of the 4,000, some 30 users have complained about overheating issues on the Bold's QWERTY keyboard.

RIM is investigating the issue, and said in a prepared statement, "This issue appears to be specifically limited to the BlackBerry Bold devices sold in Japan since last week and sales of BlackBerry Bold devices in other countries are unaffected by this matter."

RIM believes it will be able to fix the issue and resume selling the Bold shortly.

You may remember, network operator Orange in France halted sales of the Bold for other issues.

In the United States, the Bold's launch was significantly delayed from an original target of July. It didn't reach the market until just before the holiday season. Given that we continually see the Bold making headlines -- and not in a positive way -- it looks like the device may be a rare misfire from the maker of BlackBerrys. It may be a good-looking piece of smartphone hardware, but when it comes to business, function beats form.