Research In Motion Ltd.'s efforts to launch its BlackBerry wireless service into the world's largest market remain tangled in delay, giving local competition in China the chance to grab business ahead of the Canadian pioneer.
The confusion about RIM's plans to bring its technology to mainland China through a partnership with the nation's biggest mobile phone company deepened Wednesday. China Mobile Communications Corp. seemed unaware of any plans to launch BlackBerry in the near future, even though RIM executives said last week the launch should be just a few weeks away,
“We haven't been informed of any plan to launch or promote BlackBerry,” an official in the business and marketing department of China Mobile said. A spokeswoman in the Hong Kong office of China Mobile was also unaware of any launch plans.
There appears to be confusion even within the ranks of RIM. Jim Balsillie, chairman and co-chief executive officer, told analysts on a conference call last week that, after signing an initial letter of agreement with China Mobile nearly two years ago, RIM's launch was imminent. “We are on the verge of launching BlackBerry service with China Mobile and expect to launch by the end of May,” he said April 6.
RIM's public relations firm reiterated that schedule this week. But Wednesday, a RIM executive in China forecast a later launch.
“Our talks with China Mobile are going very well. We are working very tightly with them, and a deal is expected very soon, probably by the middle of this year,” Norm Lo, RIM's vice-president Asia Pacific, was quoted as saying in an interview with Reuters News Agency.
The delay is significant because it has given at least two local rivals a chance to move ahead of RIM in China at a time when some analysts are questioning how RIM will maintain its torrid growth rate in Western markets.
State-controlled China Unicom Ltd., China's second-biggest mobile operator, introduced a wireless e-mail service this month, brazenly called RedBerry. And China Mobile itself is expected to launch a similar service called PushMail next month.
Both offerings look significantly cheaper than RIM's. A standard five-megabyte e-mail account at RedBerry will cost less than a dollar a month, plus a few cents for each e-mail sent. PushMail will cost the equivalent of about $12 (U.S.) a month for unlimited usage, or less than one-quarter of the price of BlackBerry service, according to estimates in a report last month by Credit Suisse.
RIM has eyed the Chinese market almost since the day it introduced its wireless BlackBerry device to the world more than seven years ago.
The Waterloo, Ont.-based company has registered at least nine goods and server trademarks for BlackBerry in China. It filed its first application in 1999, just months after launching its first BlackBerry device in North America.
The size of China's market dwarfs even the largest of those in the West. China Mobile, for example, claims about 400 million subscribers to its network.
