Balsillie: Look out iPhone, RIM is gonna shake up mobile music

By on Jan 19, 2009 at 10:45 AM
General January 19, 2009

Oh sweet lord, is it ever going to get messy in the comments. RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie was recently in Cannes at a music industry conference sponsored in part by RIM and decided that it was the perfect forum to shoot his mouth off about how the BlackBerry will go beyond the iPhone in terms of mobile music. “We’ve moved to [music] 2.0, where music is undergoing a radical transformation and it creates a remarkable new opportunity for content owners to monetize their content… [BlackBerry is] already very music centric, what were talking about now is our platform”, said Balisille referring to the BlackBerry Application Centre. “We’re ingesting apps now and it goes online in March… [It has] a billing engine and is a channel for developers – you’ll see dozens of music apps.” But it gets better. “We are the overwhelming market leaders and we’ve been in the smartphone business for years… The Storm is a BlackBerry with different packaging, not a competitor of iPhone.” Okay, for realz, Jim? You want to revolutionize mobile music but not compete with the iPhone? As Stephen Colbert would say, you’ve got a lot of “nut meat.” What say you, peanut gallery?

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  • John

    So Balsille has completely lost his mind, hasn’t he?

    He’s worrying about making inroads in a part of the market that is completely dominated by Apple while his company is floundering at the most basic task of turning out stable, quality handsets. RIM’s last two major launches were absolutely disgraceful; the Bold was plagued by inferior software, and the Storm should have spent another month in development and field testing. This is not to say that those two products are not competent and compelling now, because they are. But both were underdeveloped when they were released and certainly cost RIM customers, and goodwill, in the process.

    RIM needs to focus on turning out trouble-free handsets before they start focusing on non-core features like music. The 8900 is a good start, but they still have a lot to prove.

  • storm user

    i have a storm… and althogh it is still buggy i love it
    but none-the less… i do not see it ever being a competitor with the iPhone in that since…

  • Bdaf

    Its called noise isolation headphones. Lookit up.

  • michael

    His arrogance is outweighed only by his stupidity.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Akers

    Wow.. I can’t believe how ridiculous some of you are.. Why so loyal to a company that doesn’t know you exist? Why get so fired up over trying to convince the masses you own the supperior device on the best network? I own a storm and I love it, I couldn’t care less what the Icrowd thinks.. I think vzw has great coverage in my area.. I don’t need to hear why you think att is better.. Since dropping my 3gish Iphone off in the donate your used phone box I’m much happier.. No more dropped calls.. No more of a slow edge network that claims its just like 3g.

  • d889

    the capability to copy and paste something? :)

  • DaCynic

    The Storm is crap. The Bold is a much better device. But the iPhone beats them both hands down. Adding a Music Store to the RIMM family, gee what a great concept. Wonder where they got it?

  • kgm

    For me a Blackberry is about making phone calls and messaging. And having owned my BB 9700 for four months there has been no drop calls. A fast and efficient mail service (1-3 seconds). IM works. A big plus, for me, is the UMA function. Happily I don’t need a case to make a call.

    Apple have shown weak leadership in handling the issues over the new iPhone . Steve Jobs should consider resigning after offering a – bumper deal – instead of offering a refund or a recall on the product. Many people in UK have signed a 24 month contract and are currently trapped with a phone that is unreliable without a bumper case.

    I was tempted to buy an iPhone direct from Apple. I’ll now have to wait for the 5th generation and am wondering how long that is going to be.

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