subject: Blackberry Getting Its Own App Company [print this page] The Blackberry, owned by Research In Motion or RIM, has been said to be falling behind in the smartphone world because of its lack of having a proper applications platform. While RIM has bragged about its new BlackBerry 6 operating system and apps platform, techies have known it was no where in the same league as its arch rivals, Apple iPhone and Google's Android. Consumers have been complaining for some time for RIM to make a decision and to stop wasting time developing their own operating system and apps platform. Well RIM did make a decision and just this week they purchased a company called Cellmania.
Cellmania, a Mountain View, California company, is a company that primarily focuses on making software used to run mobile phone software stores. Just what RIM needed. The marriage of the two companies is said to be a huge boost for the RIM corporation, not to mention a relief to those who are dedicated to their BlackBerrys. Prior to the acquisition of Cellmania by RIM, RIM was becoming known as the company who led the pack and was now falling into obscurity, somewhat like Palm. Consumers did not care about the BlackBerry OS platform so RIM had nothing to lose by finding an application system that did work. RIM's greatest assets have been its email service (on BlackBerry phones and back-end server setup), BlackBerry Messenger, and the Blackberry brand itself.
Cellmania makes the software that runs mobile application stores for carriers like Sprint and Orange. The company also drives mobile ecosystems for mobile operators and are infrastructure providers and content owners. Cellmania's integrated mFinder solution provides infrastructure on either a licensed or hosted basis to allow digital rights management of downloaded content onto mobile phones, subscription billing, time and location based content management and billing integration onto customer bills. Cellmania's mFinder solution is used as a full end-to-end delivery and ecosystem solution for some of the world's largest mobile operators.
Cellmania was founded in 1999 and also provides the world's largest repository of mobile content consisting of over 200,000 items across 200+ handsets from 100+ countries in 55+ languages. Content owners can provide their wares to Cellmania to distribute across Cellmania mobile operator and other distribution channels with a win-win business model. Cellmania provides content in many different media types including ringtones, java content, browseable content and video files.
The cofounder of Cellmania and CEO is Dr. Ronjon Nag, who is considered a mobile genius. Nag was previously a VP at Motorola and before that, founder and Ceo of Lexicus, a company that pioneered speech and handwriting recognition technology (which was later acquired by Motorola in 1993).
For those who are already Cellmania customers, the company has made a statement on their website saying not to fret. Cellmania says that while they are a part of Research In Motion, and the team has joined RIM's global organization, it will continue to support their current client base and want to thank their customers and partners for their support.
How will the new acquisition turn out for RIM? It is difficult to tell at the moment but it at least shows a dedication to making a huge step toward meeting customer's complaints and demands.
