Candian RIM (Research in Motion) recently announced that the company finally reached an agreement with the Ministry of Home Affairs of India, under which RIM agreed to provide a solution that allows security agencies to monitor on any information sent by means of BlackBerry devices on a real-time basis, the Hindu reported on December 21. In fact, the Ministry had given a deadline until the year-end 2010 for RIM to develop a monitoring solution. Pursuant to the agreement, Indian security agencies can lawfully intercepted voice calls, SMS (Short Mobile Service) and chat conversation, as well as its BlackBerry Messenger and BlackBerry corporate email service, which are highly encrypted. Further details regarding how the cloud computing-based solution will function, however, were not yet disclosed. Nokia, on the other hand, already set up a server in India, which allow security agencies to intercept any information sent by Nokia devices.

Meanwhile, RIM also stated that the company will launch the TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) version of BlackBerry, in a bid to compete head-to-head with the Apple iPhone distributed by China Unicom, the Xinhua News reported on December 20. The partnership between RIM and China Mobile was established on December 8, 2009, whereby both parties agreed to jointly develop BlackBerry Smartphones supporting both TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE (TD-Long Term Evolution) standards, according to the same source. Other than RIM, China Mobile also reached out to other mobile phone brands such as Dell, Lenovo, and Nokia to develop a wide range of TD-SCDMA Smartphones, all of which will feature the OMS (Open Mobile System) and will be sold under the brand name of Ophone, in a bid to increase its competitive advantage in China. Currently, the TD-SCDMA-based BlackBerry is under tests and is projected to hit the market some time around 2011.