Thank you, Mr. Chair and members.
I'm very pleased to be with you. I had hoped to be there in person, but there is a fair bit of snow and ice between Waterloo and Ottawa just now, and I wasn't able to get there.
As you mentioned, I am the vice-president at Research in Motion for industry, government, and university relations. I have been with RIM since 2001.
Back in 2001, we had BlackBerry service up and running in two countries, Canada and the United States, with four major wireless operators. Today, a few short years later, BlackBerry service is available in 125 countries from 325 wireless carriers. It represents a remarkable growth in the global reach of our company, in our markets. Over the same period, we have been very successful. Our revenue has doubled almost five times and our employment has gone from around 1,200 people to more than 8,000, mostly in Canada.
Today RIM remains focused on growth, and much of what I do with my colleagues is to make sure we have continuing room to grow. To us at RIM, room to grow means fair and open access to markets. In some cases, where doors are part-way open, we work hard to make them wider. Of course, we pay a lot of attention to the policy environment everywhere we do business, to make sure that open markets stay that way.
Mr. Chair and members, I'd like to acknowledge the outstanding work of Canada's trade and diplomatic colleagues in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I would also like to commend policy specialists throughout government, particularly in Industry Canada. We have been extremely well served as a growing Canadian company by that network of professional men and women who are part of our national public service.
Korea represents for us an interesting special case. Korea is not yet one of the 125 countries around the world that RIM does business with. It's interesting because Korea has a great many characteristics that would make it an extremely attractive jurisdiction in which to build a BlackBerry business, with a Korean wireless operator.
Korea is a large country with a highly educated population. It is very advanced technologically. Korea has tremendous aspirations. It has the ability to be a global player, perhaps to become a major financial hub in its region. Korea is home to many large domestic and foreign firms that we would like to do business with. In fact, we already do business with many of those firms in other parts of the world.
However, Korea is unique in a couple of ways. The most important way for us is that Korea has a unique domestic standard for cellular phones, particularly for cellular phones sold to the general public. The standard is known as WIPI, which is an acronym that stands for the wireless Internet platform for interoperability. WIPI as a standard was created in Korea. To the best of our knowledge, it is not used anywhere other than in Korea, but it has become for us, and perhaps for others, a barrier to entry into the Korean market.
We have discovered, on the downside, that this unique standard poses a barrier to doing business in Korea. Also, there have been unclear regulatory requirements regarding this application. There has been inconsistent application of the policy by the Korean telecom regulator, and the net result is that after more than a year of trying—in fact, bordering on two years—BlackBerry is still not approved for sale in Korea. This, despite the strong demand and willing partners, despite a written policy promulgated last year that devices like BlackBerry that are sold to business and not made available to the general public would be exempt from this particular requirement; notwithstanding the fact that there has even been an intervention by the ombudsman of investment in Korea at the highest levels in that country, saying that the treatment of BlackBerry is somewhat unfair; even more intriguingly, notwithstanding the fact that more than 30 non-compliant devices from our competitors are currently available for sale in Korea.
With this background—and obviously we are still working very hard with our government colleagues and business colleagues in Seoul—I think it's particularly appropriate and timely to be with you today as you consider and study the Canada-Korea FTA.
At RIM, our general position is that we are free-traders. As free-traders, we have benefited from all of the work that has gone on before in other countries, in both bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. Indeed, they have made possible the opening of markets for RIM. We are very grateful for that work.
In fact, we think it has been absolutely appropriate that Canada and Korea have sat down and had our officials involved in discussions and negotiations over many months. It's even appropriate to have put our respective signatures on documents, for without those signatures, we don't have clear indications of the strong intent of both parties to have free and open trade, nor do we have the opportunity to have the detailed work that would be required.
At this point, given where we are in the approval of BlackBerry for sale, and in particular the rather uneven treatment we have been accorded, we believe it would be inappropriate for Canada to ratify a treaty until such time as there is clear evidence that our trading partner is willing to live up to stated principles.
As you are aware, there has been a recent considerable change in the political environment in Korea. Certainly we take some of the statements that have come as positive evidence, and we trust that during this period we will, with the support and assistance of our colleagues in government, be able to enter the Korean market in due course.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's my opening statement. I look forward to our discussion.