RIM & Friends Hunt Mobile Apps

With the announcement – but not the release – today of the first 3G Blackberry, the iPhone-offensive 9000 Bold, there is now a BlackBerry Partners Fund, a $150 million venture capital fund – the money’s in US greenbacks – set up by Research In Motion, Thomson Reuters, JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry platform and - check this out - other mobile platforms.

Kleiner Perkins of course has that $100 million iFund chasing iPhone inventions and Apple is tipped to unveil its 3G in a month.

The BlackBerry fund says it’s “agnostic to both stage and balance sheet” and won’t restrict the applications and services “to any single mobile platform or any specific industry segment.”

It’s supposed to advance the state of the industry.

It’s thinking mobile commerce (payments, advertising, retailing and banking), vertical and horizontal enterprise applications, communications, social networking, location-based applications and services (navigation and mapping), media and entertainment, and lifestyle and personal productivity applications.

Kevin Talbot, a managing director of RBC Venture Partners, is going to co-manage the fund along with JLA’s John Albright. (RBC is the Royal Bank of Canada.)

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