Riyadh // The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone plans to roll out services to support Facebook and Twitter in Saudi Arabia after sales in the kingdom more than doubled last year.
Neither of the social media sites are currently supported in Saudi Arabia by Canada's Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry device, which has been losing share in the US, among other markets.
But business is booming for the company across the Middle East, where sales grew 140 per cent in the year to last August, according to company data.
Saudi Arabia reported 250 per cent growth over the same period.
"Here in the kingdom the service is limited to BlackBerry messenger and email currently and we expect to roll out the full browsing services, Twitter, Facebook in the next couple of months," said Patrick Spence, the managing director of global sales and regional marketing at RIM.
The company's stock lost 75 per cent last year as it came under increasing pressure from rival smartphone makers while battling a series of service interruptions that.
The decline has fuelled speculation about a possible bid for the company. RIM shares surged 8 per cent on Tuesday after a blog reported Samsung may be interested in buying the company.
Samsung denied the report.
"Right now we're extremely profitable.
"We don't really have any debt on our balance sheet.
"We're in an excellent financial position," Mr Spence said yesterday in Riyadh.
However yesterday it was reported that RIM's Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie had bowed to investor pressure and resigned as co-CEOs, handing the top job to an insider with four years at the struggling BlackBerry maker.
Thorsten Heins, a former Siemens AG executive who has risen steadily through RIM's upper management ranks since joining the Canadian company in late 2007, took over as CEO on Saturday, RIM said on Sunday. The shift ended the two-decade long partnership of Lazaridis and Balsillie atop a once-pioneering technology company that now struggles against Apple and Google.
While the company's business faces increasing competitive headwinds from rival smartphone makers in other markets, it is expecting this year to be "big" in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday RIM reached a deal with the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (Sagia) to boost the development of mobile apps in the country.
"We see an increasing demand in this region for localised applications and mobile content and this is creating an opportunity for enterprising software developers," said Fahd Hamidaddin, Sagia's chief of marketing and competitiveness initiatives.
