Alcatel-Lucent to Distribute BlackBerry Smartphones in China

3:25 pm on October 24, 2007 | Category: Business, Cell Phones, Mobile Devices, PDAs, Regulation, Wireless

blackberry.jpg

BlackBerry manufacturer, Research In Motion Ltd., is planning to enter the Chinese smartphone market later this year through a deal with Alcatel Lucent, which has agreed to distribute RIM’s BlackBery 8700 device in the world’s largest wireless market.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM has been trying to break into China for some time now, first applying to register its BlackBerry trademark in the country back in 1999, and officially announcing plans to enter the Chinese market in 2002.

China Mobile began marketing RIM’s wireless email service last year, but a myriad of regulatory roadblocks prevented the company from obtaining government approval for its BlackBerry devices until June of this year.

“Following our launch of the BlackBerry service with China Mobile, we are very pleased to now enter this smartphone distribution agreement with Alcatel-Lucent and Alcatel Shanghai Bell,” said RIM co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, in a company statement. “We look forward to building on the early interest and momentum we are experiencing in China with both multination and domestic corporations.”

The company’s announcement caused Research In Motion shares to surge more than 8% Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Related Articles:

    None Found

    No Comments yet »

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

    Leave a comment

    XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>


    Published by TeleClick Enterprises
    Edited by Jeremy Maddock