RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie is quoted in Business week saying
The world is wrong about apps. Many are just glorified bookmarks, he argues, that aren't necessary if you can connect customers to the Web
Which is both right, and wrong at the same time. On small, portable devices the web and apps serve different purposes - Apps are all about convenience and focus on an individual task. The Web is great at discovery and occasional usage.
RIM have a great example in their own device suite - RIM's instant messenger product (BBM) is a great app - everything it does can be easily achieved with a website (in fact arguably better with a website as then it wouldn't be restricted to just BB devices - in fact this seems to be exactly what Salesforce.com is working to achieve with their Chatter product)
However it's undeniably a very successful app, and is underlining a growth pattern for RIM outside it's traditional enterprise market.
Now it's hard to argue that RIM needed to recognize that they were very late to enabling the web on their devices - a failing that they have fixed on the BlackBerry Torch with their WebKit based browser, but they need to work very hard to bring that experience to their whole product portfolio.
The worry of statements like the above is that RIM do indeed believe that the Web is all they need - and that they won't invest in enabling superb app experiences - which would be odd as superb app experience for Email is what got them to where they are today, but if they do that - then I'll be forced to reverse my view on RIM's prospects - as the winners in the mobile market will be those companies that are able to enable superb web experiences alongside superb app experiences.
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