Smartphone Start-Ups Have a Friend in This Fund - NYTimes.com

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Smartphone Start-Ups Have a Friend in This Fund - NYTimes.com

This could be something. iFund invests in select startup companies that write applications for the iPhone. To give you an idea of popularity of these apps, Apple's iPhone App Store has served 60 million of then since the store's launch last month. Blackberry maker RIM (Research in Motion) sees this trend and will announce a yet-to-be-named fund specializing in developers of applications for its smart phone.

Are we paying attention? One thing we don't fully appreciate about hundreds of millions of smartphones in users' hands is that they have eyes, ears, know their location and are connected to the Internet. Developers can leverage these assets to unimaginable ends -- with potentially questionable aims, possibly creating a transparent world or the mother of all big brothers.

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