MUMBAI: RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie was in Cannes at a music industry conference recently. He chose the occasion to talk about RIM's plans in relation to the music industry. RIM has always been a business phone but with the addition of the BlackBerry Storm, perhaps they're trying to change that.

Balsillie said, we've moved to [music] 2.0, where music is undergoing a radical transformation and it creates a remarkable new opportunity for content owners to monetize their content… [BlackBerry is] already very music centric, what were talking about now is our platform." He went on to say, "we are the overwhelming market leaders and we've been in the smartphone business for years… The Storm is a BlackBerry with different packaging, not a competitor of iPhone."

With the recent announcement that RIM's App Store is accepting applications from developers, they are clearly hoping to turn the BlackBerry into a music device as well as an email device. Stay tuned.