China Telecom Corp yesterday signed an agreement with Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd to offer BlackBerry phones on the Chinese mainland as it competes to gain market share in the smartphone sector against its two rivals.

China Mobile has also said it would launch BlackBerry and other 3G smartphones under the Ophone brand while China Unicom is selling iPhones in cooperation with Apple Inc.

Talks are still going on to launch the BlackBerry on the mainland, the world's No. 1 market with more than 700 million users, and China Telecom hasn't finalized a timetable when it will start offering the device, the telco said yesterday.