With all the other mobile operating systems offering capital for mobile developers it is surprising that it took RIM so long to get with the program. They have just (sort of) announced a fund of $150 million dollars for BlackBerry development. The fund will officially be announced at WES this week. This fund trumps Apple’s $100 million fund and the $10 million Google Android Fund. I guess RIM is really committed to finally listening to their developers and encouraging new interest in the platform. We recently mentioned the fact that RIM should have been doing this years ago.
The funds website is supposed to be at this link www.blackberrypartnersfund.com but does not seem to be live yet. Just wait until after WES.
VentureBeat has the details (This is Google cache because supposedly it has been removed):
The fund will be used to invest in both applications and services for the BlackBerry platform, but it won’t be exclusively to support the Blackberry. Companies that support other mobile platforms in addition to the Blackberry can also apply for monies for the fund. According to our source, the fund isn’t designed to be competitive with the iFund, because it will be free to invest in applications serving that platform too.
Thanks to Richard, David, & Josep for all sending this in over the weekend!
