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RIM Attracts 15,000 Apps For BlackBerry 10 In 2 Days
CWmike writes "It's starting to look like the BlackBerry store will be well stocked with apps when Research In Motion launches BlackBerry 10 (see YouTube preview) at the end of this month. The company held an event over the weekend where it offered app developers incentives to port their programs to the BlackBerry 10 platform and managed to attract 15,000 app submissions. 'Well there you have it. 37.5 hours in, we hit 15,000 apps for this portathon. Feel like I've run a marathon. Thanks to all the devs!' wrote Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations at RIM, in a Twitter message. The 'port-a-thon' event was held in two parts: One aimed at Android developers and the other at apps written in other platforms, including Appcelerator, Maramalade, Sencha, jQuery, PhoneGap and Qt. RIM was offering $100 for each app ported and subsequently approved for sale in the BlackBerry 10 app store, up to certain limits. Developers could also win BlackBerry 10 development handsets and a trip to RIM's BlackBerry Jam Europe developer event." It's hard to believe that many current iOS or Android users are leaping toward Blackberry, though. If you're in one of those camps, is that so crazy?
How many of those 15,000 "apps" are actually useful, and how many are just worthless single-site frontends?
instead of an iphone or one of the Galaxy phones?
do they do anything that iOS or Android does not?
The idea is that BB10 supports those frameworks already. Some ports are as simple as setting up the tools and clicking a button. Hopefully the more complex ones are given the time they need.
FTFA:
"RIM was offering US$100 for each app ported and subsequently approved for sale in the BlackBerry 10 app store"
This isn't any indication that people are leaving their favorite fondle-slab for RIM's.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Be careful soon the RIM fanbois will be out saying bad things about you for admitting this. It can't possibly be that there is something wrong with BES, no it has to be every person to ever admin it was incompetent and untrained.
RIM fanbois?...thinks for awhile....you mean employees?
I am wondering how long will it takes to review all of those apps ....
is there a alt community store for FLOSS ?
because, mine is a meego's basic (but helpful) text editor and it is pending since sunday ...
and I am ready to share sources ...
--
http://rzr.online.fr/q/qnx
-- http://rzr.online.fr/
Which is dirt cheap considering hourly rates for even starting developers. I would expect that Microsoft, for example, has poured tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars for boosting the WP app store.
That's my thinking. If all you have to do is a quick rejig and recompile because the APIs are so close to the Android ones, then it's a near-zero effort situation. I don't know much about the new platform, but I thought I had read that it would support Android apps out of the box, so it may literally may be just pushing a button.
Not that there's a damned wrong with that. If Android compatibility or portability is good enough, then you already have thousands of apps ready to go and you don't need to put massive amounts of effort into convincing developers to support your platform (like Redmond is doing).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Here I will call them out for you:
BES sucks, getting rid of it was a huge win for the entire sysadmin team. We no longer had to repush servicebooks or restart the BES just so one user could start to get emails again. Doing that last one was painful because then the other BES users, who did not read the email about the pending restart, would call in to inform us that they were not getting mail during the restart. We no longer have to send back devices that for no known reason will never allow themselves to be setup for BES or any of those other headaches.
That should get them going pretty good.
Which, if you think about it, probably is a wise investment.
If on day one there's 15 apps, nobody is going to buy one because it's dead on arrival and the money you spent developing it would be a waste. If there's 15,000 apps, it's possible to conclude it's not a completely useless platform.
Releasing it without apps would be suicide, because there's nothing interesting about a smart phone you can't get software for. By now, anybody who has had a smart phone has a list of a handful of apps which are deal breakers.
Now, the question remains as to if enough people will care enough to buy these. I'm not sure anything RIM does at this point is going to make me say "oooh, I need a BlackBerry" ... but they do need to get a significant amount of people to do that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
After going through hoop after hoop to try to release an app to their store including notarized this, and documented that... for a FREE FRIGGING APP, I gave up when they told me that I needed to submit a business plan to them. I couldn't believe it.
Because 100 dollars is a fortune! I mean, it would get you a whole hour of my time! I will EAT TONIGHT!
The smart developer doesn't restrict himself to one platform, especially in a market that already has seen major shifts.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Guess a typo in TFA got carried over into TFS. I was trying to search out all these SDK's and google got confused..
So for those interested, it's spelled exactly like the stuff you put on toast. Info here..
RIM is popular in Africa:
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21567977-its-devices-are-still-popular-there-africa-wont-save-rim-blackberry-babes
And for your amusement, check out this genius sketch from Ronnie Corbett, "My Blackberry is not Worlking" [Credit: BBC - thanks Beeb!]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI
That's my thinking. If all you have to do is a quick rejig and recompile because the APIs are so close to the Android ones, then it's a near-zero effort situation. I don't know much about the new platform, but I thought I had read that it would support Android apps out of the box, so it may literally may be just pushing a button.
Not that there's a damned wrong with that. If Android compatibility or portability is good enough, then you already have thousands of apps ready to go and you don't need to put massive amounts of effort into convincing developers to support your platform (like Redmond is doing).
BB10 contains the Android Player, which essentially runs repackaged Android APK files (I'm don't know if the reason for the different package format is technical or not). This is different from the native APIs, but the user experience is quite seamless. I "ported" one of my apps to the Playbook, and it was not even a recompile - it is a package converter.
In all honest, Blackberry even as it stands now has better integration, infrastructure, and toe-holds in the enterprise market for mobile than Microsoft will ever get with respect to mobile. So, yeah - they'll do well and they'll steal market share that Microsoft might otherwise have gotten - and really needs. Look for BB to outsell MS in the mobile space once again with BB10.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
RIM may not have the largest customer base, but BlackBerry users do actually *buy* apps (unlike Android...)
And the apps are a joy to develop, at least if you have a real BB10 to test with (I do: I have a Dev Alpha). I get a choice between Eclipse and QT Creator for my C/C++, and a huge range of libraries. The platform is QL, and now Nokia have sold that to Digia, QT is coming to Android and Win8 phone in Q3, so I can port even C++ apps between platforms easily.
What's not to like?
I've never owned a Blackberry. But I like interesting OSes, and I like marketplace diversity. It's this sort of stuff that makes it interesting to own a device.
I have an iPhone 4. The only Android device that's tempted me at all so far is one of the recently announced Sonys (waterproof, ANT+, Sony's typically good camera) and that's about it. The current state of the market offers me very little that's meaningful in my day-to-day life, and so phones are kind of boring. Samsung vs. Apple. Android vs. iOS vs. WP8! It's Meh vs. Meh if you ask me.
I stick with iOS because it's a Mac household, I have other iOS devices, and my friends and family have iPhones. iMessage and Facetime are staples for me. It'll take an awful lot to pry me away from that.
But that said, if the new Blackberry is interesting enough, I'll give it a serious look. The small players have to work harder to make things interesting, and RIM is now a legitimate 'small' player in this market. It's a bit do-or-die, so I expect some interesting stuff.