RIM ranked No. 2 in the smartphone market globally with 20.1 percent market share by the end of the third quarter, a rise of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Nokia ranked No. 1 with a 39.3 percent market share, Gartner said.

RIM has said it would offer BlackBerry handsets to individual users and small businesses in China with China Mobile Ltd. It also plans to introduce a BlackBerry handset running on the Chinese-developed TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous CDMA) 3G technology.

RIM is not new in the smartphone market on the mainland as it offered its phones to big businesses in China through China Mobile in 2006 and charged high prices for its service.