After rumors swirling for a few months, Research In Motion (RIMM) has now officially announced that China Mobile (CHL) plans to offer BlackBerry service in China.

RIM and China Mobile will initially focus on supporting multinational corporations with operations in China. China Mobile will soon offer BlackBerry service nationwide and provide SIM cards to support BlackBerry service.

Availability of BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds and BlackBerry Enterprise Server will be announced at a later date.

"Millions of mobile professionals around the world have recognized the unique security, manageability, efficiency and reliability of the BlackBerry architecture," said Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO at RIM. "We are very excited to bring BlackBerry to China. The collaboration of China Mobile and RIM will extend the reach of BlackBerry to a large and important market."

BlackBerry on China Mobile's GPRS network will enable corporate customers to enjoy wireless access to email, phone, organizer, Internet and other corporate data applications.

Blackberry will be competing with a Chinese rival called Redberry that is run by China Unicom (CHU), China Mobile's competitor.