RIM’s BlackBerry has been known as a phone built for business, with its wild popularity centred around push email. But with Apple’s iPhone starting to infiltrate offices, Research in Motion is hitting back with a series of “lifestyle” BlackBerry applications from Google, Microsoft, TiVo and others that will take the battle to Apple’s home turf.
At the CITA (Cellular Telephone Industries Association) trade show now on in San Francisco, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said the line-up will include include BlackBerry-optimised versions of MySpace, Microsoft’s Live search engine, streaming radio from Slacker.com, plus a widget that allows TiVo usrs to search for TV shows and schedule recordings on the move.
The new apps will be available before the end of the year. (Australia’s Seven Media Group – home of Channel 7 and Yahoo7 – began selling set-top boxes made by the US-based TiVo in July. Seven’s contract covers both Australia and New Zealand, but plans for this side of the ditch have yet to be announced).
This is not the buttoned-down BlackBerry’s first foray into goofing off. At CITA last year, RIM unveiled Facebook for BlackBerry, which has since been downloaded 2.5 million times.
At the CITA (Cellular Telephone Industries Association) trade show now on in San Francisco, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said the line-up will include include BlackBerry-optimised versions of MySpace, Microsoft’s Live search engine, streaming radio from Slacker.com, plus a widget that allows TiVo usrs to search for TV shows and schedule recordings on the move.
The new apps will be available before the end of the year. (Australia’s Seven Media Group – home of Channel 7 and Yahoo7 – began selling set-top boxes made by the US-based TiVo in July. Seven’s contract covers both Australia and New Zealand, but plans for this side of the ditch have yet to be announced).
This is not the buttoned-down BlackBerry’s first foray into goofing off. At CITA last year, RIM unveiled Facebook for BlackBerry, which has since been downloaded 2.5 million times.
BlackBerry also announced an expanded partnership with Google.
The search giant has updated and streamlined its free-for-download Mobile App for BlackBerry, which allows BlackBerry-specific versions of Google’s Search, Picasa, Gmail, News and Reader apps to be accessed from a single search bar.
BlackBerry users can access Google’s mobile apps by pointing their phone’s browser to http://m.google.com/.
BlackBerry users can access Google’s mobile apps by pointing their phone’s browser to http://m.google.com/.
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