What do you do when a company goes bankrupt? If you're Jonas Norberg, that's when you get ready to party. Norberg invented the Pacemaker, a pocket sized DJ system showcased in June 2007 at the S?nar Festival in Barcelona. In October 2008, DJ Mag recognized Pacemaker as the year's Most Innovative New DJ Product. Then it all went wrong. Norberg and Tonium, the company holding Pacemaker's technology, disagreed on Pacemaker's development and Norberg exited the Pacemaker team. Tonium moved forward with its own plans for the DJ system – which led straight down the path to bankruptcy. At that point Norberg was able to buy back the intellectual property rights to Pacemaker. Now Norberg with his new partners have ported the technology into an app for the BlackBerry PlayBook. Pacemaker (www.pacemaker.net) has become a touch based experience, much more accessible than before. “We understood that with the abilities of a touch interface, we could raise the user experience and usability to new levels,” said Norberg, co-founder and CEO of Pacemaker. “We took the original Pacemaker idea and combined it with the powers of a touch platform. I must say that I am very happy with the result!” When originally launched as a hardware device, the Pacemaker was priced at $850. Now the same functionality is available in the Pacemaker app for only $19.99. Currently, it's exclusive to the BlackBerry Playbook and sales of the app have been phenomenal. Three days after launch the Pacemaker app sold more than the target hoped for over the first four months. “Creating Pacemaker as an app was pure business logic,” Norberg remarked. “Distributing hardware requires creating devices and the whole manufacturing cycle. Then there's distribution and associated logistics. Add in the global financial aspects and it becomes a nightmare. Distributing apps is much easier and requires fewer resources, so the technology can be sold at a lower price.” The project to release the new Pacemaker took off in September 2011. BlackBerry contacted the Pacemaker team very early on to promote their tablet and after evaluating all the other tablets available, it was agreed that the PlayBook was the best choice. “PlayBook is based upon QNX, the only true real-time operating system running on a mobile device. When developing a DJ system it is very important to have the kind of control that the BlackBerry PlayBook delivers,” said Norberg. The Pacemaker CEO also found that launching the app into the Blackberry ecosystem has been a rewarding experience as it has garnered a lot of attention quickly. “Being a small fish in a small pond is much better than being a small fish in a big pond,” he advised. “Bigger is not always better. Launching on the BlackBerry platform gives us time to grow stronger, interact with consumers and develop the sustainable business model that we have already planned.” Norberg believes that the app will be especially popular in Saudi Arabia. About eight years ago he travelled to the Kingdom with a student delegation from Sweden and spent two weeks touring the country. He learned that people are very interested in home entertainment technologies and with Saudi Arabia's young population, he thinks that the Pacemaker will quickly have a big fan base here. “The mix as platform is a great way for people to express themselves with music,” said Norberg. “Producing music is difficult but creating a mix is easy and enjoyable. Pacemaker plus music equals fun. We plan to introduce more services and more apps. Our goal is to turn everybody into DJs with Pacemaker.”
