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Confirming recent reports, BlackBerry has announced that Delhi-based Optiemus Infracom has won the exclusive rights to manufacture, sell, and provide customer support for BlackBerry handsets in India, along with Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Essentially, with the agreement, the two firms have entered into a 10-year brand licensing agreement under which Optiemus will not only make and sell phones for BlackBerry, but also offer customer support.
This agreement follows BlackBerry’s recent global licensing agreement with TCL Communication and PT BlackBerry Merah Putih in Indonesia. And with this latest regional deal, the Canadian company has now achieved full global coverage for licensees in all markets. The agreement between BlackBerry and Optiemus Infracom also supports the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, which aims to create local manufacturing and job opportunities.
Additionally, along with licensing its security software and services suite, BlackBerry will also license its related brand assets to Optiemus. However, BlackBerry will continue to control and develop its security and software solutions and maintain BlackBerry security software, including regular Android security updates to the platform.
“India is a very important market for BlackBerry, so we are delighted our latest licensing partnership will extend the BlackBerry software experience to more customers and support the Indian government’s ‘Make In India’ agenda…With its infrastructure and experience in manufacturing, and proven success as our distribution partner, Optiemus Infracom Ltd is the ideal partner to design and manufacture trusted BlackBerry secure Android handsets for customers in India and neighboring markets,” says Alex Thurber, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobility Solutions at BlackBerry. 
“Our exclusive partnership with BlackBerry, a brand synonymous with secure mobile communications, shows how we are continuing to partner and innovate to bring the latest in handset design and experience, combining the security of BlackBerry and versatility of Android, to our customers in the world’s fastest growing smartphone market. This agreement will help us expand mobility choices by designing, manufacturing and offering secure BlackBerry devices which are made in India, for customers in India, as well as Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. With our strong end to end play in the mobile ecosystem in manufacturing, retail, distribution and support, we are confident that our journey with BlackBerry will be a long and successful one,” said Ashok Gupta, Chairman of Optiemus Infracom Ltd.
Optiemus has been the distributor for BlackBerry smartphones in the country since November last year. Under its earlier tie-up the company has sold smartphones such as the DTEK 60 and DTEK 50. Priced at Rs 46,990 and Rs 21,990 respectively, the smartphones come with an alert system that tells the user if their privacy was at risk.