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DOHA Research in Motion (RIM), makers of BlackBerry, plans to introduce its latest operating system in Qatar and the Middle East very soon, a top company official has said.

“At 98 percent, Qatar has a strong BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) penetration, which is among the highest in the world, and we plan to launch the BlackBerry 10 operating system in Qatar by the year-end,” Director of Product Management, Services and Platforms, Middle East, RIM, Mohammed al Mefleh told Qatar Tribune on Monday.

According to Mefleh BlackBerry continues to experience strong growth in the Middle East region with a 119 percent year on year (YoY) growth from March 2011-12. He said 68 percent of RIM’s total revenue came from markets outside of North America and the UK.

Asked about the revenues the company generates from Qatar, the RIM official said, “The company doesn’t disclose country-wise figures. He, however, hastened to add that RIM was doing very well in the Qatari market.

Commenting on the other RIM projects in Qatar, Mefleh said the company is working with QNB, Qtel and Mastercard for the first mobile near field communication (NFC) payments programme in the country. He said RIM has entered into partnerships with local developers to build relevant applications for Qatar.

Asked about features of the BlackBerry 10 operating system, Mefleh said RIM has worked with TouchType (the maestro’s behind SwiftKey) to deliver a keyboard that intelligently learns your mannerisms from your Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as your messages and emails to accurately predict what you’re going to type next.

“The most impressive ability is the custom- made keyboard feature which learns which particular letter keys you hit and invisibly adjusts the ‘sweet spot’ according to your typing habits. Over time, this will ensure that miss-hit keys are greatly reduced and that you should be able to type near fluently with little to no effort,” the RIM official said.

Earlier, Managing Director, Middle East at RIM Sandeep Saihgal, while launching the BlackBerry® Curve™ 9320 smart phone, said, ?The 9320 is running the social mediafriendly BB operating system of 7.1.? He said the new handset has features like 3G, Wi-Fi, FM radio and up to 32GB of expandable memory via a microSD card slot. (AI)