RIM set to roll out BlackBerry to mainland China (Reuters)

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd. (Toronto: - )(Nasdaq: - ) said on Thursday it will soon roll out its BlackBerrywireless e-mail service in mainland China with China MobileLtd. (0941.HK), which has two-thirds of the Chinese market andis the world's biggest mobile carrier by number of subscribers.

No date is set for the service launch, which will comethree years after the Canadian technology company set itssights on the massive market and after the launch of a cheaperChinese rival called RedBerry.

The service will first be aimed at multinational companiesand others who already have BlackBerry handsets.

"Success here is really important," RIM co-CEO JimBalsillie said in a phone interview from Beijing. "It's a veryimportant market because one: it's so big, two: so many of ourcustomers do business here."

After three to four months of connecting the "few hundredthousand" corporate customers it estimates are waiting forservice, RIM will turn its attention to the much biggerhome-grown professional market.

RIM said it hopes to gain approval and start selling itshandsets, such as the 8700 and 7130 models, along with itsservice, by early autumn

"Currently, there's 400 million cellular users in China ...how much of those are higher-end and enterprise users?"Balsillie said.

"We don't know the exact size of it, but it's not a badguess to clip a few percentage points, as an estimate, off ofthe 400 million and say that's probably where it belongs."

Balsillie shrugs off the launch of a rival service by ChinaUnicom in early April, calling it the "silly RedBerry thing."

The phone company, which is state controlled just likeChina Mobile, has negligible RedBerry sales and a smallerdomestic market share compared to China Mobile, he said.

"It's still very early to really comment or do anythingabout it," he said. "It's really a bit of a much ado aboutnothing until they really get some sales."

But some analysts suggest there is cause for concern.

The longer it takes RIM to make a wide-scale launch inChina, the greater the odds of a time-to-market advantage forRedBerry, said Desjardins Securities analyst Paul Howbold.

RedBerry service costs less than a dollar a month, plus afew cents for each email sent, according to several reports.

What's more, China Mobile is expected to soon launch anemail service called PushMail, that allows customers to useemail on their existing phones.

That service will sell for about $12 a month, or less thanone-quarter of the typical $50 price for BlackBerry service,estimated Credit Suisse in a recent report.

Despite the long march to this launch, Balsillie said theChinese market is just now seeing the need for devices such asBlackBerry.

"The tool is in a real sweet spot," he said. "BlackBerry isa very proven and established product and solution, and so thatreally puts us in a good spot."

($1=$1.10 Canadian)

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