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RIM Gets Clearance To Sell BlackBerrys In China

The road from Waterloo to Beijing has been a long, eight-year journey for Research in Motion that has finally come to an end. The maker of BlackBerry smartphones recently received permission to sell the devices to corporate customers in China. The move will only add to RIM's surging subscriber base.

Looking at RIM's first quarter results for fiscal 2008, it is obvious that the company is seeing solid growth. With popular devices like the Pearl and Curve coaxing consumers to make the leap to BlackBerry, the number of BlackBerry faithful has swelled.

The total number of BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter increased by approximately 1.2 million to over 9 million total subscribers. That increase helped add to the company's 16.3% growth in revenue to $1.082 billion.

"We are starting fiscal 2008 with strong operating performance, including record revenue, earnings and subscriber results," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM in a prepared statement. "After completing our first billion dollar quarter, we are now preparing to ship the 20 millionth BlackBerry handset this summer. This growth is a testament to our strong portfolio of products and services and our successful channel expansion. We look forward to the remainder of the year in which we anticipate continued growth within both North American and international markets."

Now that RIM can tap the Chinese market for more subscribers, there's no where for RIM to go but up. According to the Associated Press, RIM will begin selling the BlackBerry 8700g by the end of August. Even though the 8700g is an older generation device, there are already 5,000 pre-orders. The first three Chinese cities to receive these devices and RIM's service are Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhuo.

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