RIM- Tata Teleservices launch BlackBerry Curve 8530

Research in Motion (RIM) in association with Tata Teleservices in India has launched the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone priced at Rs18,990.

The phone which affords access to email, messaging, social networking, multimedia and entertainment will be available to Tata Teleservices' CDMA customers.

''The CDMA smartphone market is developing rapidly. The launch of the BlackBerry Curve 8530 will give Tata Indicom customers access to a very approachable smartphone at an affordable price,'' said Pradeep Dwivedi, senior vice president, Tata Teleservices.

''We believe that the BlackBerry Curve 8530 supported by our extensive network will appeal to young professionals and students who want easy-to-use smartphones with rich communications and multimedia features that allow them to stay connected through social networking sites, instant messaging services including BlackBerry Messenger, and email.''

The phone features a full-QWERTY keyboard, 256 MB flash memory and is powered by a 525 MHz next generation processor for improved performance.

It also incorporates a built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) and GPS with support for location-based applications.

Users will be able to access BlackBerry App World featuring a broad and growing range of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones.

Additionally, users get access to email, messaging (IM, SMS, BlackBerry Messenger) and popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

The smartphone supports 10 email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts including Yahoo!, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL and Gmail, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server support.

Curve 8530 offers voice-activated dialing and Bluetooth (version 2.1), with support for hands-free headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals. The Curve 8530's memory is extendable up to 32 GB.