China Mobile and RIM Team on TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE

Leading mobile phone carrier China Mobile and Canadian handset vendor Research In Motion announced today a partnership aimed at supporting the TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE technologies on RIM's BlackBerry smartphone operating system. At the same time, the duo also announced that they planned on launching the BlackBerry Internet Service, as well as BlackBerry smartphones for small to medium-sized businesses and professional consumers.

China Mobile and RIM have launched the BlackBerry solution in the country in 2006, and were focused ever since on delivering it to enterprise consumers in China. Some of the already existing customers in this area would be BaoSteel Group, China International Capital Corporation (CICC), CITIC Security, COSCO, Essence Securities and Ping An Insurance. However, the duo also said that they worked together with developers for delivering localized content and applications for Chinese users of the BlackBerry OS.

“BlackBerry smartphones are the world’s leading communications tool for business users and are increasingly adopted by consumers for their powerful messaging and multimedia capabilities,” said Wang Jianzhou, chairman and chief executive officer, China Mobile. “In addition to growing the established enterprise market, we also plan to offer BlackBerry Internet Service to individuals and SMBs in China. Furthermore, we are expanding our strategic objectives together as RIM plans to support TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE technologies on BlackBerry smartphones.”

The strategic relationship between the two companies has been now extended to deliver the BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry smartphones to the SMB and professional consumer market in the country. At the same time, China Mobile and RIM also stressed on the fact that they will work on the development of BlackBerry handsets that will feature support for the TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE technologies. BIS should arrive at China Mobile in 2010, and it and BlackBerry devices will support various applications, including social networking, email and IM. Customized content will arrive from China Mobile through Mobile Market, FETION and other Web-based services.

“We are very pleased to expand our strategic relationship with China Mobile,” said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “With these new business and technology initiatives, we believe that RIM and China Mobile will be in a strengthened position to serve Chinese customers and to jointly address the growing smartphone market opportunity in China.” The two companies also mentioned that they planned on unveiling exact details on the availability of the BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry phones for SMBs and professional consumers in the country at a later date.