BlackBerry subscriber network in the UAE maintained the rapid growth it has recorded since the handset was introduced a few years ago, with their number soaring year-on-year by nearly 50 per cent to 749,000 so far this year.
Official data showed blackberry users exchanged more than 12.8 billion texts through their handsets in 2010, nearly four times the total messages used by all other mobile phones in the country.
“A large part of the blackberry users in the UAE are aged below 18 years,” said Mohammed al Ghanem, director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (RTA), which oversees the communications sector in the UAE.
The UAE, the largest Arab economy after Saudi Arabia, has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the world, standing at 178 per cent at the end of 2010. The rate is far higher than other countries in the region, including the world’s richest nation Qatar, with a ratio of 129 per cent.
Etisalat controls more than two thirds of the subscribers in blackberry and other mobile phone services in the UAE.