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xecutives of Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry smartphones, will soon visit Indonesia to showcase their latest device and platform, BlackBerry 10, to the country’s mobile phone operators, as well to discuss market entry strategies.

“We are coming in within a couple of weeks to speak with carriers,” RIM chief marketing officer Frank Boulben told The Jakarta Post during a limited press interview.

“We will be visiting in mid October,” he added.

He further said that RIM intended to meet with operators, or carriers, who have had experience in bundling BlackBerries with various operator service programs and packages.

Operators, he added, had shown interest in RIM’s newest platform, which the company claims sports the kind of “flow” that allows user to “seamlessly” switch between one running application and another.

In late August, RIM reportedly provided Canadian mobile phone operators a sneak-preview of the BlackBerry 10, the launch of which has been delayed from this year to the first quarter of 2013 on the grounds that company was
perfecting the platform.

The delay, however, was another dark cloud in RIM’s stormy year, which saw the smartphone manufacturer’s stock prices drop, market share shrink and employees laid off.

That is why the eventual market performance of the BlackBerry 10 would be critical for RIM, tech observers have noted.

Frank added that during the show-and-tell session with operators, RIM would “conduct extensive demonstrations of the device’s capabilities” as well as discuss the device’s market road map, such as product positioning and marketing.

A study from the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that 3 million BlackBerry devices will be shipped to Indonesia by 2012, increasing to 8 million by 2015.

Yet, the study predicts that 4 million Android-based devices will be shipped to the country by 2012, with the number more than doubling to 10 million by 2015.

“What we want from operators is the commitment to go into the market,” he said, adding that “acquiring new customers” was also the company’s aim.

The head of product development and management at Indosat, Sumantri Joko Yuwono, said that a team from RIM had already conducted preliminary meetings with the mobile phone operator.

“It was more of a preliminary approach,” he said.

He added that the entrance of BlackBerry 10 was “highly anticipated” given that BlackBerry was still widely used in the Indonesian market.

Sumatri previously said that BlackBerry had managed to keep growth up, with the number of subscriptions of BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) at the operator touching 1.5 million early this year.

Meanwhile, Telkomsel spokesman Ricardo Indra said that his firm would generally test the compatibility of a device with the network before launching bundling services.

Operators and device manufacturers often collaborate in pushing a product to market. Here, the operators provide various price packages that would allow users to access different device features, such as its browser and instant messaging services.

“The test process is not only related to the performance of the device’s operating system in relation to short text messages [SMS] and voice data, but also how it connects to our network,” he told the Post.