RIM Co-CEO Balsillie Mocks Apple's App Store Claims

Looks like Jim Balsillie, co-CEO at Research In Motion (RIM), is still seething over the potshots Apple CEO Steve Jobs took at RIM's tablet strategy last month.

In a Q&A Tuesday at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Balsillie harrumphed at Apple's ever-expanding App Store figures and declared, "You don’t need an app for the Web." He also suggested that the Web browser works just fine in the mobile environment and downplayed the need for a mobile specific software development kit (SDK).

"We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web," Balsillie said, as reported by The Telegraph. "You don’t need to go through some kind of software development kit. That’s the core part of our message. You can use your existing development environment."

RIM and Apple have been competing in smartphones and they're about to add tablets to the mix. Apple has the iPad, and in the first quarter of next year RIM plans to launch its 7-inch Playbook tablet, which is priced at $500.

Last month, Jobs couldn't resist kicking some sand in RIM's face over the size of the Playbook's screen.

"We think the current crop of seven-inch tablets are going to be DOA, Dead on Arrival. Sounds like lots of fun ahead," Jobs said in Apple's fourth quarter earnings call.

Balsillie fired back by suggesting that people are growing tired of Apple's ideological bully act. "We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple," Balsillie said in a blog post last month.

"For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7" tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience," Balsillie said in the blog post.