Research In Motion chief executive Jim Balsillie has attacked tech giant Apple at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, saying that smartphones don’t necessarily need to use apps for certain uses.
“You don’t need an app for the web,” Balsillie said. “We believe you can bring the mobile to the web, but you don’t need to go through some kind of control point.”
“It is really not about a set of proprietary rules or about “appifying” the web,” he said. “The web needs a platform that allows you to use your existing web content, not apps.”
He pointed to an example of online videos using Flash, but these are rejected by Apple’s software. As a result, he says the time of smartphone apps will “pass real quick”.
The comments come as RIM prepares to release its own tablet, the PlayBook, due in the first quarter of 2011.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
