There is a lot off buzz floating around the interwebs about the 20$ firmware upgrade for the iPod Touch. It kind of got me thinking about how things would be if RIM charged for firmware updates.

Now, I know that a more apples to apples comparison, (no pun intended) would be between the iPod Touch and the iPhone, however, this is a BlackBerry blog, so, I will ask the question.

What if RIM charged for firmware updates?

Depending on how you look at it I guess that you could say BlackBerry owners already do pay for firmware updates. The overwhelming majority of BlackBerry users have either BIS or BES which they pay for each and every month. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that some of the revenue RIM gets for BlackBerry service goes to the development and support of software updates.

I suppose one could also say that the iPod Touch update is more of a software overhaul than it is a firmware update. You could think of it as updating your OS.

At the end of the day I just don’t think this would fly with BlackBerry users. I think they overwhelmingly would stay on the their current OS unless there was an actual bug and I can’t see RIM ever charging for a bug update.