Research In Motion Ltd, maker of BlackBerry wireless email devices, is aiming to launch commercial service in China by year end amid a rapid expansion in Asia, the company's co-CEO said on May 17. RIM said last October it had signed a memorandum of understanding with China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd to offer its trademark BlackBerry service in China, the world's biggest cellular market with nearly 350 million subscribers. "I think the table stakes are now where they need to be" in China, co-chief executive Jim Balsillie told Reuters in a phone interview from Beijing, where he was attending an industry event.
"You should keep your eye closely on what's going to happen with tests ... this summer and later this year aggressive launches."
He declined to say if RIM had signed a definitive agreement with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier by subscribers, since the MOU was announced in October.
Balsillie said that RIM was close to offering service in South Korea, Asia's third-biggest economy after China and Japan.
"We see Korean opportunities certainly this year," he said. "I think you'll see that it's fairly imminent, both a service in Korea and (one that supports) Korean characters."
The Canadian firm enters markets worldwide by signing agreements with local wireless carriers, which then offer service using the BlackBerry name and signature PDA-like devices.
RIM has launched service with 14 Asian carriers in eight countries to date - including about nine in the last year alone - and hopes to double the number of partnerships in the region this year.
Its Asia expansion comes amid an aggressive worldwide campaign that saw its subscriber base more than double to 2.51 million from a year earlier in its latest reporting quarter that ended in February.
Revenues for that quarter also nearly doubled to $404.8 million.
Within Asia, RIM now offers services through partners in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and the Philippines, with South Korean and Chinese services expected in the near term.
But it is still absent in the region's biggest economy, Japan, due to technical reasons and also because of Japan's complex writing system that combines characters of Chinese origin with two native alphabets.
"As they move to more global wireless protocols, I think you're going to see a lot more opportunities for RIM to participate in Japan," he said.
"I think you would more likely see it as an '06 opportunity rather than '05. But that's a strategic direction... All the stars are aligning, but they're not 100 percent aligned."
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