The BlackBerry Partners Fund has been really active over the years creating funds for companies in fields related to the BlackBerry platform. Whether these companies are directly building products for BlackBerry or in markets that RIM could take advantage of, the Partners Fund has been there to seed companies through initial development. Recently, the Partners Fund lead a $2M seed investment in Fuse Powered Inc.. Fuse is an interesting company that publishes digital mobile games.
The mobile gaming space is growing rapidly but will it ever become like the console publishing business? The problem with mobile gaming is that you’re forever constrained by the fact that the price for a mobile game has been set at $2. Console games will run you $60 and therefore can do a lot more. The mobile space has the potential to be more powerful than console gaming, but it’s going to take a lot to get the market to shift to a price point that is conducive of a strong business.
The BlackBerry Partners Fund has launched its 4th annual Developer Challenge which includes a series of competitions to win USD $3 million in prizes. This year’s Developer Challenge features three categories:
1) Best Adobe Flash/AIR app
2) Most Innovative BlackBerry WebWorks app on the BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 6
3) Most Addictive social app using the BBM Social Platform.
Winners of the Developer Challenge will be selected across North America, Latin America, Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific. For those who don’t win, the Partners Fund will also be honoring applications in six categories to receive a Recognition Award.
After the success of the first BlackBerry Partners Fund, RIM has created a second venture capital fund with $150M to be invested in “mobile computing” initiatives. This second fund has a more global mandate than the first fund, which saw some pretty cool acquisitions such as SocialDeck by Google. It should be interesting to see which companies get backed by this fund, which is relatively large in dollars. Hopefully RIM will be creating a third fund in the near future and keep the cash flowing to cool new companies that need it.
The winners of the 2010 BlackBerry Partners Fund Super Apps Developer Challenge will soon be reaping the rewards of winning the challenge and working with App-Promo, a mobile PR agency, to promote their products across traditional and digital media. The 4 winners, 8 finalists and 16 semi-finalists from their respective regions will be featured in a marketing program that includes public relations, social media, mobile advertising, search engine marketing and in-store promotion.
Considering most of the apps that won the challenge are already well-known, it will be interesting to see if the PR company can actually help downloads/sales significantly. Sure, getting featured in App World will help, but that’s hardly any work on the part of App-Promo. In the end, a PR company can only do so much and apps are more likely to explode in popularity by viral means rather than traditional media advertising.
“Bill Shock” has been an issue that almost every heavy smartphone user has experienced at one point or another. With SMS, roaming, data and voice charges, your bill can pile up pretty quickly, regardless if you’re enterprise or consumer. Anomalous Networks is a company that has announced financing from the BlackBerry Partners Fund and Anges Quebec to help reduce Bill Shock and provide customers with alerts and warnings before they enter a roaming situation or are about to reach their plan limits. Continue reading ‘Partners Fund Invests in Telecom Expense Management Solution Anomalous Networks’
The BlackBerry Partners Fund has announced the winners in this year’s BlackBerry Partners Fund Developer Challenge and they are:
North American Winner: Poynt
Latin America Winner: Vlingo Plus – Voice App
Europe / Middle East / Africa Winner: UbiNav EU
Asia Pacific Winner: Love Indonesia
Around 400 apps were evaluated for the challenge and the above apps were selected based on quality, user experience and how effectively they incorporated “Super App” characteristics. Winners each receive a Regional Winner prize package valued at more than $85,000, including an Elite membership in the BlackBerry Alliance Program, an App Promo package, BlackBerrys, prominent placement on BlackBerry App World for three weeks, and more. Hit the jump for the full press release. Continue reading ‘BlackBerry Partners Fund Developer Challenge Winners Announced’
