BlackBerry is coming to China after years of being expected. Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM) announced the news in a conference call with different analysts. He said:

“We’re finalizing delivery availability in the mainland. We’re excited to move forward to deliver BlackBerry to corporate customers in key cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, where there’s strong interest in the BlackBerry solution.”

China Mobile Communications and RIM have been working together to make this possible but had to fight many regulatory hurdles. BlackBerry sales were expected in May 2006 but nothing was able to be done. China has 400 million mobile device subscribers so the market is one that is definitely interesting for RIM.

The BlackBerry 8700g should appear in Chinese shops by the end of the month with a sale price of around $661. Delays made it possible for China Mobile’s rival, China United Telecommunications Corp. to introduce their own push e-mail service last year called “RedBerry”.