RIM CEO: Apple App Strategy All Wrong

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SAN FRANCISCO–Research In Motion co-CEO
Jim Balsillie Nov. 16 challenged Apple’s model of offering an SDK for
smartphones and applications within a closed system that doesn’t support
standard technologies such as Adobe’s Flash multimedia software.

"We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don’t need
to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that’s the core part of
our message," said Balsillie at the Web 2.0 Summit here. "You don’t
need an app for the Web" or to use a special defined set of development
tools.

This viewpoint stands in stark contrast to Apple’s closed development platform
of programmers writing apps using Apple-sanctioned software and SDK.

Balsillie said RIM’s BlackBerry development environment lets programmers
publish apps to a BlackBerry without writing any native code, or use Adobe AIR
SDK and have a local runtime on a BlackBerry smartphone.

"So you reject the appification of the Web?" asked Summit
host John Battelle. "Correct," Balsillie said, challenging Apple’s
"there’s an app for that" slogan for its iPhone App Store, which has
more than 300,000 applications.

For more, read the eWeek article RIM CEO: Apple is Wrong for Having an App for That.

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