This week is the big Blackberry conference WES2008 in Orlando, and RIM is cranking out the news just in front of the show. The debut of Blackberry Bold (the renamed 9000), plus their $150 million Blackberry fund were two topics we discussed on the Squawk Box this morning. The consensus? It’s all in the browser, baby… it’s all in the browser. Most people on the line felt that if RIM got the browser right, then Bold would allow the legions of Blackberry faithful to keep the faith. If not, then iPhone 2.0 is looking pretty compelling.
The Blackberry fund announcement actually raised more questions than it answered, not the least of which were questions about how the actual applications get to market. Several people called upon RIM to implement something like the Apple iStore in order to be able to step around the carrier controls and grow the market for applications faster. After the call, I visited Rick Segal’s blog to find out more about how Blackberry fund will work. It is, apparently, a classical venture fund focused on mobile applications.
We also had a short discussion of how Twitter broke the story of the earthquake in China last night.
On the phone: Brad Jones, Arshad Merali, Nick Desbarats, Andy Abramson, Dan York, Mark Hewitt, Jeanette Fisher, Adam Somer, Ian Hood, Bill Volk, James Body, and Jonathan Jensen.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
