The BlackBerry Partners Fund launches, a $150 m fund for mobile applications (1)
The BlackBerry Partners Fund is launching today, and it’s a $150 million fund specifically targeted for mobile startups. The fund is managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners.
It’s announced as stage-agnostic and also platform agnostic, meaning that they are willing to take a look and fund a mobile application that is not specifically made for BlackBerry handsets, although one condition is that a BlackBerry version should be planned at one point in the roadmap.
The fund’s limited partners are RIM, RBC, and Thomson, although investment decisions will be taken only from the JLA and RBC Venture Partners. See Rick Segal and the Wellington fund blog for more details.
Things are heating up recently in the mobile space, with a radical shift from hardware to software. The iFund was announced just one month ago, when Apple launched the iPhone platform. Just late last week, Nokia’s CEO also announced that they are moving from being a traditional manufacturer to a stronger focus on software. This is amidst reports of huge projection for the mobile space ($15billion market in 2013) and huge amounts of money thrown at new mobile networks in the US, and right now in Canada. Undoubtably, RIM also realized that while they had a very strong core product, they were lacking in third-party applications that would enrich BlackBerry and make it more pro/consumer friendly.
Mobile applications are the new frontier, and needless to say, it’s exciting to see that the action is happenning right here.
[...] Also, the move has certainly a lot to do with their investors who have just partenered with RIM. [...]
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