RIM is finished. Unless...

Even though they dominate among business users, RIM and the Blackberry are not even considered real players in the Smartphone market of today for a few very important reasons, but most importantly, because of Apps, or its lack of them.

The importance of smartphone apps can't be underestimated at this point.  Apple has turned the industry upside down with the iPhone for the most part because of their introduction of a simple to use, always available, chock-full-of-instant-gratifying applications called the App Store.

Until they introduced it, we mobile geeks with our Windows Mobile devices, riding the crest of mobile technology, were smart  geeky enough to get apps on our devices - even our storage cards.  But creating a market of apps that are instantly available to all users simultaneously and easily installable made it a new, viable, medium for marketing for developers of their applications.  Developers had an instant market so they were spurned to develop, and the platform benefited from the selection, dubbed, "There's an App for that" by Apple.

And as a devoted iPhone user, I can attest, that there really is an App for a vast amount of things. Believe it or not, I actually use my iPhone to do everything from measuring (yes, as a ruler App:Apple-O-Meter) to taking stunning panoramic photos (App: Pano.)  It's not just about games.  It's about having a device with the power (almost) of a laptop computer, and using it to its fullest.  And it's precisely in this area Android, Palm and even Windows Mobile are trying heavily to compete and catch up. And it's precisely in this area that RIM is failing miserably.

To start, the devices themselves are underwhelming, and a big part of it is their OS.  The stability of their OS has been repeatedly put to the test and failed.  The simplest example is this: try installing a few apps (if you even can) and watch as your emails begin to magically delete.  Also, installing apps is a challenge since the devices have very limited memory as compared to other Smartphones (which all have at least several gigabytes worth, for media and apps.) To their credit, RIM tried to fix the problem, but the "Blackberry App World" can feature all the apps it likes, but the device doesn't lend itself to using Apps.

But here's the crazy thing.  The solution for RIM is simple.  And if followed, it could send shockwaves through the industry.

... drumroll ...
Build a Blackberry interface (a la BB Connect) for Android OS.

Imagine that. Overnight, the entire devoted base of Blackberry users are converted to Android users, and they reap the benefits of both platforms. They'll have an interface (read: skin) and functionality that they're used to, but on a platform that has over 30,000 apps and an OS that can handle it.  Top it all off with the backing of Google, and it's a match made in heaven.  The only thing they would need to work out is how to divvy the revenues from downloaded apps from Blackberry devices, but that doesn't seem insurmountable to me.  They need to learn from Palm's mistake, and instead of trying to recreate the App Store, capitalize on the existing one.

Are you listening RIM? you've dropped the ball. It's time to pick it up.