BlackBerry Partners Fund Announces $100M Investment In China

by The PocketBerry Team

28 May 2010 No Comment

Research in Motion, through the BlackBerry Partners Fund, made a strong move into China today by teaming with China Broadband Capital Partners, a group specializing in communications investments in China. BlackBerry Partners Fund will launch an affiliate fund of $100 million with CBCP. The goal of the fund is to explore ways for the Blackberry to tap into rapidly expanding Chinese mobile phone market, and in specific target consumers to whom smartphones would have appeal. The move into the world’s largest cell phone market seems to be the first of its kind.

BlackBerry Partners Fund, started in 2008, was meant to provide a fund which could expand the reach of the BlackBerry by pursuing investment opportunities. China represents an ideal investment, as a great deal of entrepreneurs and mobile technicians are now coming from the nation and these entrepreneurs can effectively employ, as well as creatively advance, the uses of BlackBerrys. And as an already titanic and still growing industry, China’s mobile phone market remains an untapped mine in increasingly competitive smartphone battles. China’s cell phone market is plentiful, but its smartphone market virtually bare, meaning that Research In Motion may be the first of several companies to venture into the Chinese smartphone market.

Apple’s iPhone has a fund similar to the BlackBerry Partners Fund, called the iFund. Despite increasing the iFund’s valuation to $200 million dollars, neither Apple nor the managing entity of the fund, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, have announced plans to invest in China. Currently, then, Research In Motion is the only smartphone maker to have a presence in the world’s largest mobile phone market- a strategic decision that may pay handsome dividends in the near and distant future.

-by Zain Haq

Source: BlackBerry Partners Fund