RIM to tie up with 100 colleges in Kerala this year

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) is planning to associate with around 100 colleges in Kerala under its BlackBerry BASE (BlackBerry Apps by Student Entrepreneurs) initiative this year.

It has started a BlackBerry Innovation Centre in association with Rubus Labs at Startup Village  in Kochi to engage engineering students to develop applications, Annie Mathew, head (alliances and developer relations), RIM India, said.

“We have entered into a partnership with five colleges and have plans to tie up with around 100 educational institutes in Kerala within a year,” she added.

BlackBerry invites students to come up with innovative mobile application ideas. The students then  develop the selected apps with the technical support from its team. The company will conduct training sessions across 126 engineering colleges in the state.

RIM had started this initiative last year in Tamil Nadu on a pilot basis with more than 800 students. “Of the total apps developed, we accepted 30 applications,” she said.

The company plans to take this initiative to other states in the coming years.

RIM on Thursday showcased its latest technology and applications on the BlackBerry platform deployed at SkyPark Café here, making it India’s first Near Field Communications (NFC) café powered by BlackBerry. The cafe is powered by BlackBerry smartphones, PlayBook tablets and NFC-based applications.

RIM also has plans to associate with more than 100,000 registered developers to create innovative and user-friendly applications by 2014.