Why RIM Is Charging Much More For Apps Than Apple
RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) may want to widen its consumer base, but the price points in its new BlackBerry App World store shows that its still catering very much to the enterprise crowd. RIM has released pricing guidelines for it
I believe they charge £5 per device per month. This can work out expensive if you have a few devices.
well, RIM will allow free apps too, which are many of the best on the iPhone, offering a lot of useful services. but the point that RIM is aiming at business class customers as opposed to general consumers is a good one. and given their business model that is a logical plan. the Storm is an effort to expand, but RIM's bread and butter will always be its crackberry customers.
Not clear why everyone is aping Apple for the sake of it…
iPhone is a consumer device (right now) and an AppStore makes immense sense. Get the products out to a large populace, easily and cost-effectively where the consumer owns the device.
BB is not in that space and will never be. Their core strength is enterprise where the apps are dictated by the company which issues them. The IT departments probably went with BB for the control and security it provides and hence BB could be contradicting its own strategy by offering apps to be downloaded and installed.
Moreover, as a user would you spend personal money for apps to install on your corporate laptop? don't think so. So why would they do on the BB is baffling. Any app deemed useful for a company, will be standard issue from the IT. Period.
Comparing to the Apple App store prices doesn't make nearly as much sense as comparing the prices that BlackBerry apps are ALREADY at. The iPhone didn't have apps already made for it, so opening an app store pricing for these types of apps for the iPhone consumer was like the wild west…. it needed to work itself out. This isn't the case for BlackBerry. You can buy BlackBerry apps on all the major carrier decks, from websites, wap sites, etc. This isn't new. I guess because "app stores" are the big thing now and Apple has been so successful that we want to compare everything to it. Which it's hard to blame anyone for doing… I just think we are losing site that this really isn't anything new for BlackBerry, it's just one more store consumers can use to buy BlackBerry apps.
Agree Keith, but it definitely raises an interesting question how can Blackberry straddle both the consumer and enterprise markets. You could argue that its app store should be aimed at its consumer base, since as you point out the more enterprise oriented apps are already out there–like BigHand for example, which has a pretty good base of companies already using their blackberry app, which Derek rightly pointed out costs 5 pounds per device per month. Will be interesting to see who does purchase from it and what sort of apps turn up.
Yes it sure will be interesting to see how they will handle this. I think they'll mimic catalogs that are already live, that are more consumer oriented. There are a lot of consumer apps out now which I'd say the average price is $4.99 to $9.99. For example, you can go out to AT&T's MEdia Mall on the web and they have a ton of branded games mostly for $9.99 or Cool Tools has a lot of subscription consumer apps.