Will RIM’s just-introduced BlackBerry App World become the business-class version of Apple’s more consumer-oriented iPhone App Store? That’s the question being asked as the Canadian phone maker prices BlackBerry applications starting at $2.99.
Unlike iPhone applications that can be purchased for as little as $0.99 each, a multi-tiered price system for BlackBerry users ranges from $2.99 all the way up to $9.99 per app.
RIM’s departure is viewed as an acknowledgment of growing resentment by some iPhone developers at App Store pricing.
Developers, such as the creator of the Twitter application Twitterific, “have warned that iPhone developers are often stifled by pressure to sell apps at the 99-cent mark,” according to one report.
The higher priced App World could mean attract those developers, according to CNET.
“RIM needs more developers on its bandwagon because the iPhone is the shiny object in the mobile world,” the report said.
In the end, Apple and RIM are trying to attract two different audiences. And in the case of RIM, business users won’t “sweat” the higher price.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
