The No. 1 smartphone maker in US today announced their new smartphone platform BlackBerry Bold 9000. The new phone uses 624MHz Marvell processor, 320 x 480 screen, HSDPA/EVDO, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. The phone is based on the latest version of BlackBerry OS, 4.6 that includes DataViz DocumentsToGo, full HTML email and full HTML browser that displays web pages in desktop format like iPhone does. It comes with 1GB of onboard memory that is AES256 secure memory, for corporate IT managers to store confidential data. You can expand the total memory by adding up to 16GB MicroSD card. RIM has not announced the release date and price for the phone yet.
RIM also announced the $150 million BlackBerry Partners Fund in collaboration with RBC and Thomson Reuters. The Fund will be used to invest in mobile application and services development for the BlackBerry platform and other mobile platform. The BlackBerry fund is definitely inspired by the $100 million iFund for iPhone application development announced by Apple and KPCB few months back. But the good thing about the BlackBerry Partners Fund is that it will not restrict the development of the mobile application and services to any single mobile platform or any specific industry segment. You can get more information about the fund on BlackBerry Partners Fund website.