A key element to that – at least for tablet makers with apps ecosystems – will be leveraging the ability of carriers to act as a payment and billing platform, Balsillie said. “When you enable carrier billing, their ARPU goes up fast.”
Balsillie cited announcements from RIM this week that BlackBerry AppWorld is working directly with carrier billing for Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Vodafone, with services ranging from paid apps appearing on a DT customer’s phone bill to Telefonica facilitating in-app payments.
“Carriers can participate directly in the apps ecosystem this way,” Balsillie said.
Balsillie also said that NFC is an extension of the carrier payment strategy, and one that RIM fully intends to exploit.
“Many if not most [new] BlackBerry devices this year will have NFC in them,” Balsillie said.