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Research in Motion (Quote, Company Info) used the CTIA Wireless 2003 spotlight on Monday to formally unveil its 'BlackBerry Connect' licensing program and immediately announced deals to open its wireless e-mail gateway to the Symbian and Microsoft operating systems.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, known mostly for its e-mail pager device, said the 'BlackBerry Connect' licensing program clears the way for rival mobile devices to connect to its BlackBerry Enterprise Server using a push-based wireless architecture and infrastructure.

In what is viewed as huge client wins for RIM, the company has signed up Symbian and Microsoft (Quote, Company Info) and plans to add Nokia (Quote, Company Info) in the second half of 2003. Financial terms of the deals were not released.

Separately, RIM introduced a new pager -- the BlackBerry 6210 -- a data and voice-enabled device for the North American market.

The company said the new pager would feature increased memory for application and data storage and new support for wireless e-mail synchronization and integrated attachment viewing. Based on Java, the BlackBerry 6210 promises delivery of e-mail, phone, SMS, browser and organizer applications.