GOOD MORNING. Stocks in Asia closed lower today, European shares are down, and U.S. futures are pointing to a lower open.

Research in Motion (RIMM) investors can breathe a sigh of a relief at least for now. After weeks of legal wrangling, RIM has reached a tentative agreement with Indian authorities that won t shut down BlackBerry services in the country. The BlackBerry-maker has agreed to provide India access to secure user data transmitted on its smartphone beginning on Sept. 1. RIM has offered several options for Indian authorities who will be reviewing them during the next two months. India had threatened to shut down BlackBerry email services by today unless RIM provided a solution for how its government could track this data.

Problems with foreign governments began mounting earlier this month when several countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and India started citing national security concerns over how RIM handles data transmission. By far, the most crucial country for RIM to hold onto has been India, which has approximately 600 million mobile subscribers and is in the process of rolling out its 3G network. (By contrast, the other two countries represent about 1.2 million users, about 2.5% of its total subscribers, collectively.)

The announcement, which came Monday afternoon, was what most RIM shareholders were hoping to hear. Yet RIM s stock closed at $45.59 on Monday, 0.8% lower than it closed on Friday. During premarket trading this morning, RIM is down 1.4%. Since the beginning of this month, the stock has dropped more than 20%.

On some levels, it appears that investors are concerned about the damage RIM may have incurred during the past few weeks as it battled its case with India. Since then, several vendors, including Nokia (NOK), HTC and Samsung have started to heavily promote and discount their smartphone models, Sameet Kanade, an analyst at Northern Securities, wrote in a report. We believe these delays and the potential threat may having long-term implications for RIM s potential success in India, a key growth market for its services, he wrote. It s possible that RIM will be forced to significantly discount its BlackBerrys in order to gain a significant share of the Indian market, he added.

Some potential solutions to address government demands could include the installation of an operating system update that permits tracking, deactivating its Internet service encryption and inserting forwarding software in its server, Pablo Perez-Fernandez, a senior analyst at MKM Partners, wrote in a report earlier this month.

Another issue at hand for RIM and its investors is whether other countries will pop up demanding unencrypted access to BlackBerry communications. Earlier this month, the company released a statement saying that it was discriminatory to require such access while communications over virtual private networks on smartphones remains legal. We believe this statement by RIMM amounts to a legal warning against foreign governments attempting to discriminate against BlackBerry, wrote Perez-Fernandez. He added that it s possible for this matter to end up at the World Trade Organization.

IN OTHER NEWS:

• On Monday, the U.S. government proposed a grading system for cars that would assign them a letter grade based on their fuel economy and emissions. LINK
• Dell (DELL) may bow out of the bidding war with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) for data storage company 3PAR (PAR) by Wednesday, due to the rising price tag to acquire the company.LINK
• During the next week or so, Google (GOOG) is expected to unveil a priority inbox, a new feature on Gmail that will separate users important emails from those of less significance. LINK