BEIJING, Oct. 18-- Former rivals Palm Inc.and Research In Motion Ltd.(RIM) on Monday announced that they are working together to offer RIM's Blackberry wireless email service on Palm's Treo smartphone.

The companies said BlackBerry Connect will be available only on Palm's Treo 650, a popular version of the Treo that runs the Palm operating system. It'll be available in early 2006.

With carrier activation, the Treo 650 combines a compact, full-featured mobile phone with email, an organizer, messaging and web access, allowing users to organize and simplify their business and personal lives all in one place.

"This is an opportunity for us to expand the pie for a market still in its infancy," said Page Murray, Palm's vice president of marketing."We need to be flexible and we need to chase the business wherever it goes."

Almost all of RIM's current subscribers now access its e-mail service through RIM's own thumb-operated BlackBerry, which helped popularize wireless e-mailing when it was launched in 1999.

RIM Co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said the BlackBerry Connect program currently has"several tens of thousands" subscribers, but that should ramp up soon.

"There's no question that there is a lot of demand for the Palm Treo in the marketplace out there. Certainly we see it in our customers," he said.

Last month, Palm announced an upcoming version of its Treo smartphone that will run on Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.

That product will be available early next year.

(Agencies)