MTN and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9780 smartphone is now available for customers in South Africa.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 is the newest addition to the BlackBerry Bold series of smartphones and features a premium and iconic design with an incredibly easy-to-use keyboard and optical trackpad.  This new smartphone is elegantly styled and packed with advanced communications and multimedia features. It is also the first BlackBerry Bold smartphone to come with the new BlackBerry® 6 operating system.  The BlackBerry Bold 9780 is available from MTN in black or white.

Serame Taukobong, chief marketing officer at MTN said: “The BlackBerry Bold series of smartphones have been enormously popular among MTN subscribers and we expect the BlackBerry Bold 9780 to experience an equally enthusiastic uptake. It offers our customers a rich user experience in a compact, attractive design.”

“We’re pleased to bring the BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone to MTN customers,” said Deon Liebenberg, managing director for Africa at RIM. “Featuring the new BlackBerry 6 operating system, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 delivers a host of new and compelling features that will help people stay in touch with everything that is important to them throughout their day.”

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 is a compact and stylish smartphone that offers a compelling blend of features, performance and design. It supports 3G networks around the world, as well as Wi-Fi® connectivity and GPS for location-based applications and geo-tagging. It comes with a 5 MP camera with a full complement of high-end features including continuous auto focus, scene modes, image stabilization, flash and video recording. The BlackBerry Bold 9780 also includes 512 MB Flash memory and an expandable memory card slot that supports up to 32 GB of additional storage.

BlackBerry 6 is a new operating system that retains the familiar and trusted features that distinguish the BlackBerry brand while delivering a fresh, approachable and engaging experience that’s powerful and easy to use. It integrates a new and rich WebKit-based browser that renders HTML web pages quickly and beautifully for a great browsing experience. The browser offers fluid navigation using the handset’s optical trackpad, includes tabs for accessing multiple sites simultaneously and provides a zoom feature that can intelligently wrap text in a column while maintaining the placement of a page’s key elements for easier viewing.

Additional features of BlackBerry 6 include expanded messaging capabilities with intuitive features to simplify the management of social networking and RSS feeds (Social Feeds), and integrated access to BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger), Facebook®, Twitter™, MySpace™ and various instant messaging applications on the BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone. Its enhanced multimedia experience rivals the best in the industry and includes a dedicated YouTube app. It also features redesigned Music and Pictures applications and a new universal search feature that allows users to more effectively search for content on the smartphone as well as extend their search to the Internet or to discover applications on BlackBerry App World™.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone is now available from all MTN-branded stores as well as Nashua Mobile and Altech Autopage Cellular countrywide.

For more information on the BlackBerry Bold 9780, please visit www.blackberry.com/bold or http://www.mtn.co.za/MTNServices/BlackBerry/BlackberryDevices/Pages/BlackBerry9780.aspx