Even as India's external affairs ministry has reportedly assured Canada that the Department of Telecommunications is trying to resolve the issue of a potential threat to India's security posed by BlackBerry phones, Research in Motion, the makers of the phones, said it is committed to addressing all aspects of the issue.
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie told Business Standard: "We want to be good citizens. We're fully open and committed to addressing all aspects of the issue. I believe it will be resolved soon."
The issue recently stirred up a hornets' nest when Indian security agencies cautioned that the misuse of BlackBerry phones posed a potential threat to the national security.
They even threatened to force the service providers to stop services unless RIM authorities assisted them in tracing and intercepting the information transmitted by the handheld devices.
Balsillie, meanwhile, declined to comment on the exact number of BlackBerries sold in India. While the Indian media has been touting a figure close to 400,000, Minister of State for Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia recently pegged the figure at 117,000.
"We do not break up region-wise numbers. All I can say is that the smartphone category is growing by 30-40 per cent annually, and that India is a very important market for us," said Balsillie.
RIM had 14 million subscribers worldwide as on March 1, 2008. It ranks first in the smartphone category in North America; a distant second to Nokia in the worldwide market, and has become the world's sixth-largest mobile vendor. The Yankee group estimates the global smartphone market to double to 600 million by 2011 from the current figure of around 300 million.
In India, too, the smartphone market is dominated by Nokia. Apple's much-awaited iPhone (worldwide marketshare of around 6.5 per cent) is also expected to make an entry with Vodafone and Airtel by the year-end.
To counter competition, RIM has introduced the BlackBerry Bold 9000 model that uses high-speed data transfer technology, has a faster processor and more memory to deliver crisper sound and video, and is equipped with a video camera and GPS navigation, says President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.
The latest smartphone is expected to be introduced in India soon. Prices of BlackBerry phones in the country currently range between Rs 15,000 and Rs 32,000.
"Enterprise mobility and enterprise software are converging. It's an around $190-billion market, driven primarily by 'prosumers' (proactive consumers) who want to interact on their own. All our 8,500 employees use BlackBerries and are exploring ways of making the experience better," explained Lazaridis. Integrating the web with the mobile device is what the prosumer does best "which explains the need for a new browser with the 9000 model," he added.
The BlackBerry's success with social networking communities, too, is showing results. RIM had teamed up with Facebook last year to have the social networking site users connected all the time. "In less than five months, we have had one million downloads of the Facebook application on BlackBerries," noted Lazaridis.
What about the future? RIM, which is attempting to make its BlackBerries a lot smarter and faster with global positioning system (GPS), Wi-Fi, 3G and HSDPA, is also enabling the seamless convergence of its handheld device with the office deskphone. In the words of Lazaridis, "we now are doing things for the office deskphone (PBX) what we did for office email servers (read push email) a decade ago".
