Research in Motion, maker of Blackberry devices, is putting together its retail footprint with distribution tie-ups with partners like Redington India, which will help in setting up a national retail distribution channels for its smartphones.

Under the distribution agreement, the existing BlackBerry smartphones and service plans will be available via retail and modern trade outlets in cities like Mumbai, Delhi & NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad. Frenny Bawa, vice-president (India) RIM, says: "We realised that Indians like to 'touch and feel' the product and hence we are extending our products from operator-led distribution to retail outlets." RIM expects that a retail distribution will increase consumer penetration of BlackBerry smartphones across India.

The company is also gearing up to launch an online application storefront by March 2009. It is also working with its carrier partners to provide carrier-customised, on-device application centres to help foster after-market application downloads.

Third-party application developers had begun submitting their applications and content in December 2008. The storefront will allow developers to set their own prices for applications and they will retain 80 per cent of the revenue generated from their applications. "RIM is progressively working with carrier partners on strategies to introduce application centre on upcoming Blackberry smartphones," confirms Bawa. Although she underplays the question of "competing with Apple," she agrees, "BlackBerry is cementing partnerships with a variety of application developers and it will be for consumers to benefit in 2009".

The company, which has reported an 97.9 per cent increase in revenues over the previous fiscal, believes that this increase in revenues was principally due to increase in the number of BlackBerry devices sold in emerging markets like India. The recently-introduced Pearl Flip Phone and the BlackBerry Storm are the latest push into the consumer market. Bawa anticipates: "The new form factor will give RIM exposure to the popular flip phone market and offers further replacement choice for existing BlackBerry users."

With a renewed interest in the consumer segment, RIM has singled out social networking as the key interest area for consumer applications. The Ontario-based mobile device firm has announced partnerships with MySpace, Facebook and Flickr to allow BlackBerry applications that deliver instant alerts and updates to users.

The BlackBerry global subscriber base crossed 14-million mark in 2008 fiscal, increasing from 8 million in the previous fiscal. RIM does not give India figures but it is estimated that there are around 400,000 BlackBerry devices in India. The BlackBerry subscriber accounts in international markets rose from 28 per cent in 2007 fiscal to about 33 per cent of the total subscriber account base last year.