Research in Motion to use Intel processors for Blackberry

Research in Motion, the makers of the popular Blackberry device has finally confirmed that they would be using Intel processors in their upcoming products. This has been in speculation since quite sometime now as the market leaders face intense competition from mobile and PDA manufacturers. The company also revealed that the first such devices using Intel products are expected to reach consumers before the end of the year.

However, the company has not revealed what this would mean for the pricing of these devices. The deal with Intel focus mostly around their Intel’s XScale PXA9xx, a new cellular processor family, code-named Hermon, that runs at speeds of about 1GHz. And they have also said that this deal will not hamper their existing dealings with their current suppliers of processor products.

RIM currently uses the chips based on the ARM 9 Risc processor architecture though it is not known which company exactly supplies them to Research in Motion. Company’s Co-chief executive Michael Lazaridis said in a statement: “One of the challenges for us at RIM is that our customers are asking for more computing power, and as the customer base started to expand, we needed a platform that could handle that.”

Intel and RIM said on Tuesday that they would continue working together to develop new wireless technologies and handset features.