RESEARCH in Motion Ltd will debut BlackBerrys on the Chinese mainland by the end of the third quarter in cooperation with China Mobile, the companies said yesterday.

The telecommunications devices, the BlackBerry 7290 and 8700, will mainly target enterprise clients, China Mobile said on its Website.

RIM will start selling the 8700 model in China next month and promote it to business clients in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Some 5,000 orders for the 8700, priced about 5,000 yuan (US$658), have already been received from mainland clients, according to media reports.

The BlackBerry, a handset-sized device, allows users to access e-mail, the Internet, phones calls and corporate data. The service has attracted more than nine million users worldwide.

Companies such as IBM China, Nortel China, GE China and Tencent have promised to use BlackBerrys once the device is available on the mainland, Charles Liu, RIM's general manager in China, said in an interview last year.

"The company aims to penetrate the high-end niche market, just like the iPhone," said Sandy Shen, a Gartner Research analyst based in Shanghai.

China has more than 450 million mobile phone users, but most handsets sold on the domestic market cost less than 2,000 yuan.

China Mobile and RIM previously launched a BlackBerry SIM card nationwide. It is meant for clients who already use BlackBerrys through a roaming service in Hong Kong.

On the mainland, BlackBerry services cost users from 398 yuan to 598 yuan a month.

Meanwhile, the Canada-based firm is considering establishing its fourth global manufacturing plant in China, after Canada, Mexico and Hungary, according to Liu.