Yesterdays keynote speech by Mike Lazaridis seemed as though the BlackBerry App store was made as a response to the apple iPhone and the Apple app store.  And if anyone thought that this may have always been in the plans, the title at the CTIA09 daily show guide said it right “Rim launches answer to the Apple App store”.  That wasn’t the only place we heard about the “missing” iPhone and Apple at the CTIA09 event.  In fact, they were the topic of most conversations.

At the WipJam developers event, the iPhone app store was a main topic and figuring out how to develop in such a fragmented environment was top of mind for developers.  Most of the developers agreed that Apple has made it easy to develop and disctribute apps with the Apple app store.  Rim is not the only one that needed to “answer” or respond to the app store.  Some panelist and other phone manfacturers such as Sony Ericson opened the ground to the crowd to generate ideas about how to carve a space for their handsets.  The discussion that was not brought forward that I find is the answer to these companies is that they need to stop playing catch up and they need to innovate.  If Apple owns the music space and they have done a great job with applications, others should focus their efforts elsewhere.   Why can’t LG or Sony or Motorrola look into building partnerships with banking or retail or other areas that would tempt users to switch to the handset that provides for their needs.