Phone
App World will start in Asia with free programs, Jeff McDowell, vice-president of business marketing and alliances, said in an interview. The site, where users can download programs for games and news, is available in about 30 countries.
RIM opened the App World site in April to draw more consumers to its phone amid competition from Apple Inc.s iPhone. It sought customers in Italy, France, Germany and Spain in July after doubling the number of applications to 2,000. Apples App Stores downloadable programs exceed 85,000. RIM wont add applications just to boost its numbers, McDowell said.
“The biggest thing Im concerned about is making sure we have choice in our best categories,” McDowell said. “Were really happy with the expansion and the time frame.”
A focus on building a range of offerings in music, news, social networking and games is more important than “playing some sort of numbers game where bigger is better,” he said.
Competition With IPhone
Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Co. in New York, said the BlackBerry is limited in a competition with the iPhone by an older, “primitive” operating system.
“A lot of bread-and-butter applications will find their way onto all platforms,” said Wolf, who recommends buying RIM shares and owns none. “Where the iPhone differs is the operating system and software-development kit that allows apps to be easily written. Blackberry simply cant touch that.”
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has sold more than 30 million iPhones, as well as 20 million iPod Touch players. The Touch doesnt have a phone but can link to the Internet wirelessly. Customers have downloaded more than two billion applications, Apple said Sept. 28.
RIM, which shipped 8.3 million BlackBerry devices in the third quarter, doesnt disclose how many downloads its customers make from App World.
Extended Value
Apples App Store gets $60 million to $110 million in quarterly revenue for the company, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Toni Sacconaghi said in a report last month. The report was based on an estimated average selling price of about $3 for a typical Apple program.
Expanding the site is about “helping people discover and find new applications,” McDowell said. “Everybody wants to somehow get us to admit that its a revenue strategy. Its really about the ecosystem, about the platform and all the extended value the smart phone brings.”