Apple’s App Store alone worth more than RIM

Apple’s App Store alone is worth more than all of Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry devices. That’s according to a bit of quick-thinking analysis by writer and smartphone market analyst Brian S. Hall (via Twitter), who noted on his blog that at its share price Monday morning, RIM is worth roughly $ 7.04 billion, while the App Store is probably worth about $ 7.08 billion.

Trefis analysis of Apple's value broken down by category.

Hall’s analysis is based on a stock price of $ 13.44, its closing price as of Friday on the NYSE, and analysis by Trefis that says Apple’s App Store is responsible for about 2 percent of Apple’s market cap. Taking Apple’s current market cap of $ 354 billion and doing the math, Hall arrived at the $ 7.08 billion number.

Apps are the lifeblood of mobile ecosystems, as is becoming very apparent by the domination of the smartphone market by iOS and Android devices, which have the strongest software libraries by far of any mobile platform. There’s no better way to encapsulate what being behind in the app race means for a mobile company than Hall’s snapshot comparison of one company near its lowest point, with a single subcategory of another in its prime.

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