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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?
5,000 single-site frontends and 10,000 fart apps.
How many of those 15,000 "apps" are actually useful, and how many are just worthless single-site frontends?
And how is this question relevant here vs. every other app store boasting the same 1:1,000 ratio of good to worthless apps?
Seems a bit premature to bash RIM for doing nothing more than what everyone else does...and that is publish huge nicely rounded marketing numbers for apps, regardless of value-add.
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.
it has... Canadian Technology!
So....it asks you nicely before it crashes? Or just apologizes afterwards?
No it cross checks you into the boards while serenading you with Alanis Morissette songs, before pouring maple syrup on your concussed head, ya hoser.
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.