China Mobile will offer a price discount on BlackBerry services to corporate users and also introduce the Apple iPhone in the domestic market to tap demand for mobile e-mails on handsets, Shanghai Daily learned yesterday.

China Mobile's Shanghai branch signed a cooperation agreement yesterday with Baosight Software, a subsidiary of Baosteel Group Corp to jointly provide mobile information services to manufacturers and offer mobile CRM (customer relationship management) services.

BlackBerry phones, developed by Canada-based Research In Motion, allow users to access e-mail and the Internet. Presently the phones are sold only to corporate users, not individual users, on China's mainland.

"We will bundle the BlackBerry and Baosight's services and big clients can enjoy a price discount for the services. But the offer still needs approval from the parent firm (China Mobile)," said Fan Hailin, a Shanghai Mobile's corporate client division official.

Shanghai Mobile now charges users 398 yuan (US$58.13) to 598 yuan a month for BlackBerry services.

By the end of July, Shanghai Mobile had attracted more than 10,000 BlackBerry service users, half of the national level, from 1,700 companies.

Shanghai Mobile aims to lure "dozens of hundred" new BlackBerry users by the end of this year.

China Mobile, the world's No. 1 carrier by subscribers, will launch the iPhone to tap demand for mobile e-mails.

"The iPhone will come to China as early as next year," was all Fan would said.

(Shanghai Daily September 12, 2008)