Research-in-motion
The iPhone’s Competitors Have A Big Problem: Their Games Stink
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by MG Siegler on July 22, 2009

It’s no secret that gaming on the iPhone has been one of the main keys to the App Store’s success. You know it, I know it, and so you have to believe that all the competitors know it too. And yet, their actions would seem to suggest that they don’t know it. Because they keep building devices, operating systems and app stores to compete with the iPhone, that simply can’t hold a candle to the iPhone when it comes to gaming.

At the Casual Connect conference in Seattle today, some numbers were thrown out there, talking about just how big gaming is now on the iPhone. Of the nearly 70,000 apps in the App Store, some 20% are games. Yes, that means there are between 10,000 and 15,000 apps that are games, just for the iPhone alone. To put that in perspective, that is more than the total number of apps that all of the App Store’s big competitors (Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm’s App Catalog, BlackBerry’s App World) have — combined.

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A Dash Of Navigation Software In Your Next Blackberry
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by Leena Rao on June 4, 2009

Research In Motion has acquired Dash Navigation for an undisclosed amount, according to a spokeswoman for RIM. Dash, which makes makes the car GPS device Dash Express (read our review of the device here), had been struggling to compete with GPS device competitors like Garmin, and shifted its focus away from the hardware business last year towards selling its software to other device manufacturers.

Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia backed, Dash originally manufactured a network-connected GPS that pooled the location and speeds of all nearby Dash owners to give them back real-time traffic reports. The device has some notable features but couldn’t build a large user base and was forced to change its business plan and lay off 65% of its staff in November. We wrote back then that Dash’s API program was strong, so switching to licensing its software made sense. But the primary appeal of Dash’s software, which is built around being connected to other Dash owners and sharing driving data with each other, could be lost if the software is licensed by a device manufacturer.

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Who Would Have Guessed? Blackberry Users Love MySpace
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by Michael Arrington on November 20, 2008

When I think of Blackberry users, I think of accountants, lawyers and anyone else who wears a tie and carries a briefcase. MySpace users, sorta the opposite.

But there must be some significant overlap, because 400,000 people downloaded the MySpace Blackberry application in the last week, says MySpace – it was launched on November 12.

Both RIM and MySpace say this is a record – no other application has been downloaded so quickly onto Blackberry devices, and MySpace has never had an application on any platform be downloaded as often.

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The iFund Has Competition: $150 Million Blackberry Fund To Be Announced Soon
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by Erick Schonfeld on May 10, 2008

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The platform wars are going mobile. Whether it’s the iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows Mobile, the mobile platform that will win in the end will be the one with the best and broadest collection of applications. To give developers a little extra financial motivation, funds are being set up to invest in them. Google announced a $10 million Android challenge back in November, and Kleiner Perkins announced its $100 million iFund for iPhone-only startups in March. Now, it looks like Research in Motion is about to announce its own $150 million Blackberry Partners Fund (site not up yet) to spur applications and services for its mobile device.

At least, that is what VentureBeat reports in an item that appeared in its feed, but has since been pulled from the site (see headline here. Update: the first link above is now live). According to that post (excerpt):

Research In Motion, the RBC and Thomson Reuters have invested in an $150 million venture investment fund, called the BlackBerry Partners Fund, to support developers of applications running primarily on the Blackberry.

The announcement will be made in Orlando at a convention on Monday.

The venture firm backing the fund is Canada’s JLA Ventures, a Montreal and Toronto firm active in mobile. That firm will co-manage the investing process, together with the investment group of Canada’s largest bank, RBC Venture Partners. RIM, RBC and Thomson are anchor investors in the fund. Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, is on the advisory board of JLA Ventures.

The fund will focus on Blackberry apps, but will also be free to to invest in startups that develop for other mobile platforms as well. That’s smart because no startup should restrict itself to just one device.

But doesn’t it seem like everyone thinks they need to dangle money in front of startups to attract them to their platform these days? (See also the fbFund for Facebook startups and and the MySpace incubator spinoff Slingshot Labs). What ever happened to simply building the best damn platform in the world and letting the app developers come to you because that’s where all the users are?

Update 2: VentureBeat also has a Q&A with one of teh venture partners here.

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BlackBerry Partners Fund
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New Blackberry 9000 in iPhone Black?
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by Erick Schonfeld on December 31, 2007

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A picture of what may or may not be the next-generation Blackberry 9000 popped up in an online forum. The device does not appear to have a touchscreen, but it does sport a black iPhone-like sheen. Again, this could be the real deal, a hoax, or some unrelated prototype. But one thing is for sure: iPhones and Blackberries are on a collision course. As iPhones gain more enterprise-class e-mail capabilities, Blackberries will add more consumer-friendly design to its devices.

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