Airtel and Research In Motion (RIM) announced on Friday, the launch of the corporate and high end business enterprise BlackBerry series in India.

Mr Norm Lo, vice-president (Asia-Pacific), RIM, said, "There are close to five million BlackBerry users worldwide. This new convergence device will signal the end of mobile phones. Customers can access corporate data, sales and inventory information while being mobile with a device that has more processing power, much faster browsing capabilities and data speeds."

The new Rs 29,990 BlackBerry 8700g, is the first enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (EDGE) platform handset from Airtel which features a completely re-engineered device platform with an Intel XScale cellular processor, 64 MB flash memory for faster web browsing, application performance and attachment viewing. Once an email is sent to the inbox, the message is automatically pushed to the BlackBerry, in addition to enabling secure, wireless access to back-end office applications.

Mr Hemant Sachdev, director marketing and communications, Bharti Airtel, said, "This handset is ideal for the exclusive style and usage needs of the corporate user and the business enterprise segment. Our research indicates that 50 per cent of the top Indian enterprises use BlackBerry’s and now the retail segment is also embracing the concept." According to experts, EDGE provides up to three times the data capacity of GPRS and allows the delivery of advanced mobile services such as the downloading of video and music clips, full multimedia messaging, high-speed colour Internet access and email while being mobile.

Nearly five months after announcing that AppLabs Technologies, a privately-held software testing firm, and eSolutions, a software firm in Chennai, would be amalgamated with itself, VisualSoft Technologies has called off the deal, citing a delay in approval by regulatory authorities. The merged entity was expected to create a mid-size software testing and services firm with revenues of Rs 400 crores in 2006-07.

That the deal would be called off was expected, after Sashi Reddi, CEO of the AppLabs Technologies, told this newspaper in an interview on March 5 that, "More delay could be bad for both AppLabs and VisualSoft." Mr Reddi declined to comment.

In the event, the VisualSoft board, which met at the company’s headquarters here on Friday, decided to cancel the transaction. "Since the proposed scheme of amalgamation is getting delayed in obtaining the approvals from appropriate authorities, the board felt that the proposed scheme of amalgamation shall not be pursued further. As all the three companies are operating in the fast-growing IT sector such delay will not benefit the planned synergised growth. Accordingly, the board decided to withdraw the scheme of amalgamation with immediate effect," a company release said.

The main cause of the delay, as both Mr Reddi and Mr V. Krishnan, CFO of VisualSoft said, was the issue of valuation. As per the stock swap for the amalgamation, AppLabs shareholders were to get 17 equity shares of VisualSoft.