Single Developer Responsible For Over 47k Apps In BlackBerry World

hypnosec writes "If you are a BlackBerry owner, navigate to BlackBerry World (or just visit the website) and you will find that developer S4BB has developed over 47k apps for the BB platform. Unsurprisingly, most of them are just spammy apps that don't add any value. Apps like 'Restart Me Free,' 'Daily Quote,' 'Lock for SMS,' 'Search for Amazon,' 'Silent Foto Free' are just a few among the thousands of apps on BlackBerry World that actually have no utility whatsoever. BlackBerry announced back in May that developers were increasingly interested in making apps for the platform, and that BlackBerry World had more than 120,000 apps. This raises questions about the authenticity of the claims, and about the approval process that's been accepting these apps. S4BB may have a few useful apps for the platform, but that doesn't mean all of their apps are of 'A' quality. A statement from BlackBerry said, 'Developers in all app stores employ a number of different monetization tactics. BlackBerry World is an open market for developers and we let market forces dictate the success or failure of these tactics.'"

Comments

heh

[i kan reed]

We let market forces dictate the success or failure of these tactics

The same market forces that cause no one I know to actually own a blackberry?

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

~LOL~ I was thinking the same thing.

Re:heh

[realmolo]

Exactly.

Blackberry is dead in the United States, and it will be dead in the rest of the world within the next 5 years. Probably less. They blew it.

Re:heh

[Sponge Bath]

They blew it.

There's an app for that.

Re:heh

[narcc]

Weren't they supposed to be dead by 2012 then 2013? Now, suddenly, they'll be dead in the next 5 years? I'm starting to see a trend.

Yes, I've used iOS and Android. No thanks. I'll stick to the uncool platform that actually meets my needs.

The excellent developer tools are just icing on an already tasty cake.

Re:heh

[Russ1642]

Companies seem to stick around quite a while after they're dead. Kodak is still around for crying out loud. Doesn't make them any less dead.

Re:heh

[WarJolt]

Assuming it takes a week to write each app, 40 hours a week and $20 an hour. 47000* 40*20 that a $37.6 million worthless investment because no one buys blackberry apps. I say that's a conservative estimate.

Re:heh

[cybermancer]

I actually have a Blackberry Playbook (I realize you don't know me, so it doesn't invalidate your claim). It is really nice hardware. The OS is a little weird in places, but it is very fast. The killer is there are so few apps that I want to download. Discovery of useful apps in their store is not very easy either.

It is sad. Mostly use it for email and web surfing.

Re:heh

[gstoddart]

I say that's a conservative estimate.

I'd say that's a very generous estimate.

We're likely talking about shovelware, which doesn't really do much. If you just crank out an endless stream of nearly identical apps ... well, you can produce useless garbage much faster than that.

Do you really think this 47k useful, well thought out apps that have any meaningful functionality? Me, I figure he's made a crap ton on minor variants of a handful of apps and submitted them.

This sounds more like the PT Barnum school of application development.

Re:heh

[OakDragon]

They blew it.

There's an app for that.

If that were true, it might have saved them!

Re:heh

[ScottCooperDotNet]

You mean the Blackberry device that didn't come with an email app at launch? And doesn't have it's own cell connection, requiring a Blackberry to piggyback off of? The device reeks of 'design by committee'.

Re:heh

[ShanghaiBill]

Assuming it takes a week to write each app

Bad assumption. Once you have a basic "app framework", the apps listed should take about ten minutes each.

Re:heh

[mlk]

How many are the same application with a config value changed?

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Chapter 11 is far from dead. Sorry that yo don't understand how business and finance actually work.
 
I've always said that Slashdot is a great place for market advice... take whatever you retards say and do the opposite.

Re:heh

[whisper_jeff]

Just be ause the headless chicken continues to run around the yard does not mean it's alive.

Blackberry is dead and has been for a while. The body just hasn't realized it yet.

Re:heh

[Falkentyne]

So.. Windows Phone 8?

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

So where is the same analysis of the bazillion apps in itunes or google play? Any idea how many useless apps are in there? Who are the publishers with the largest number of apps in those ecosystems? I've never seen any stats on that.

Re:heh

[gstoddart]

My wife has one too. And it crashes, hangs, and is generally not very useful.

It's also had terrible battery life, and BB has stopped issuing updates for it.

It's a product which was DOA.

Re:heh

[amicusNYCL]

I seriously doubt that the average turnaround time for an app that restarts your phone or turns on the camera flash is a week of full-time labor. It's not like they write the same boilerplate code for each app, they import the framework and then add the app-specific logic.

BlackBerry World has been live for 52 months. So they have produced an average of 903 apps per month, or ~225 apps per week, or ~29 apps per day. They aren't spending a week on each app, and they have not put in 37 million dollars worth of labor time. If you think they have a staff of 225 programmers working full-time to produce free smiley apps or apps that do nothing except play a single sound, then I think your estimate is not exactly conservative.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Chapter 11 is death in every sense of the word related to business. Now before you get all high and mighty about someone contradicting you...how many RIM shares do you own? Thought so - fuck off.

Re:heh

[CadentOrange]

You're approaching this from a financial perspective. Let's approach this from a product perspective. Kodak is dead.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you tell us one, just one, need that isn't met on iOS or Android?

Re:heh

[mwvdlee]

Judging by their market standards, there's probably some 47,000 apps for that.

Re:heh

[Skater]

I have one, albeit not my own - it's my employer's. (It's a "Curve" - not the current BB 10 OS.)

I really don't like it. We're apparently getting iPhones soon to replace them, and I'm ready. I have an S3 now, my previous phone was an iPhone 3GS (which I still use for one app that doesn't have an Android version), so I've used all three OSes, and honestly, BB's is annoying to use. Other than checking my work email, I rarely use the phone. I thought the physical keyboard would be a plus, but it turns out I can type as well on my 3GS or my S3 as I can with the BB, and when I'm not typing on the iOS/Android, I get a bigger useful screen.

One other annoying quirk that ensures I'll never be tempted to buy a BB: It only charges off its own included charger, and my Samsung S3's charger. No other charger works. We probably have 25 or 30 USB chargers around the house, in the cars, etc., for a bunch of devices - we have several iPods around, an iPad, iPhones, my Samsung phone, my Asus tablet, plus a bunch more chargers of various brands. I tried every last charger; the phone simply refuses to charge from all but the BB and Samsung ones. So, when I need the BB most, when I'm traveling, I have to remember to grab one of those two chargers (one of which I keep at work). (Note, my Asus tablet is the same way - it only works with its own charger - but at least it doesn't have a standard USB port interface, either. And that USB charger WILL charge my Samsung phone, so except for the BB I would only need to carry that charger.) At least with the iPhone 5 I'd only need the Lightning cable, any USB charger will work with it.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

OS not 'approved by NSA'?

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry is dead in the United States, and it will be dead in the rest of the world within the next 5 years. Probably less. They blew it.

Exactly. They should have gotten the extra revenue from handing over all their info to the NSA.

Re:heh

[pr0fessor]

Kodak consumer cameras are everywhere along with printers, ink, paper, and print kiosks not so sure I would say dead... maybe stagnant. A camera is a single purpose device but everyone has a cell phone with a camera and even cheap ones can have 5 mega-pixels. {better than 3.5x5 photo stock}

Re:heh

[Exitar]

At the rate of one app per week, the guy should have been born in 1109.

Re:heh

[ArhcAngel]

You know you can install Android apps on it...right?

Re:heh

[Crudely_Indecent]

Hey wait a second...I own a blackberry. Two actually. They're sitting in a drawer with a bunch of other old and obsolete phones.

At one point, I was against touchscreens - that was back when they sucked. These days, just about anything running android and iphones are better than anything Rim ever put out.

Re:heh

[ArhcAngel]

If you aren't just trolling then it may be defective. I haven't had any of the issues you just mentioned. The battery lasts for weeks with light use. If you would like to still use it I would suggest reinstalling the OS clean and see if it doesn't clear up.

Re:heh

[smittyoneeach]

In the same sense that a BSOD used to "save" Windows.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

OS not 'approved by NSA'?

Prove Blackberry isn't.

Re:heh

[spire3661]

At 47,000 apps, hes got a template churning them out. Plug in a few values and its done.

Re:heh

[ArhcAngel]

One man's trash I guess. I am in the exact opposite camp. I have a 4S, a Galaxy SII, and a BB Bold 9900. I haven't turned the 4S on in months and I use the SII for games. The email on the iPhone and Android are cumbersome to me compared to BB and having to remember to change the password for email on my phone when I change it on my PC so I don't get locked out is a PITA. My BB is always connected to the company network but if I want to connect on the iPhone I have to launch VPN and if the screen times out while I am making a decision I have to start the whole process over. I am waiting for the company to roll out a BES 10 and maybe then the iPhone won't be such a burden to use. Ironic a BlackBerry product might make the iPhone more palatable. It also may just be the thing that keeps BlackBerry relevant.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

One other annoying quirk that ensures I'll never be tempted to buy a BB: It only charges off its own included charger, and my Samsung S3's charger.

Bizarre. I too have a curve, and I've never encountered a usb cable that doesn't charge it.

Re:heh

[Jane Q. Public]

"The same market forces that cause no one I know to actually own a blackberry?"

That's a different subject.

People who expect a "walled garden" like Apple or even Google are surprised. Okay.

But the old saying, which has been around far longer than smartphones, is "Caveat Emptor". If you don't like a free marketplace then don't buy shit there. If you do like a free marketplace, don't download shit programs. Neither the law or the world are supposed to be designed to protect people from their own stupidity.

Having said that: yes, Blackberry made some marketing mistakes. But they are unrelated to what moves on their app store. Then, though, there is that third thing: Blackberry probably should not be counting 1k-byte shit apps in its total.

Re:heh

[RedHackTea]

Besides the 47k apps, it looks like the guy wrote a script to up-star all of his apps -- which makes searching for useful apps a pain. The majority of them are 4stars+: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/vendor/102/?countrycode=US

Re:heh

[jandrese]

Look at the app list. He's clearly writing them with a script. One app for every sound in his stock sounds folder. One app for every link in his bookmarks file. That sort of thing. There are a few oddball apps here and there that probably took a couple of hours to crank out, but this guy is not spending real time on the vast majority of his works. He's clearly using a spray and pray approach, hoping that enough random $0.99 downloads of apps that just load the mobile version of the webpage you could have gotten with the browser or play a single sound will give him a steady income.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer (a major tertiary medical center in the Southeast US) is finally officially dumping Blackberry after several years. The humorous part is that for most employees they are getting rid of company-supplied phones altogether, and instead letting people get reimbursed for the smartphone of their choice. The program is being touted in official communications as "Bye-Bye Blackberry". That's got to make RIM wince.

Re:heh

[NeverWorker1]

Just to be a pedant, nobody owns RIM shares anymore. They might, however, own BBRY shares.

Re:heh

[Dzimas]

Kodak exited the consumer digital camera market in 2006 when they handed over the design, manufacturing and distribution of camera equipment to Flextronics.

Re:heh

[gstoddart]

If you aren't just trolling then it may be defective.

LOL, no, I'm not trolling ... and, yes, we've concluded that it's defective, just maybe not in the way you mean. For the stuff she runs on it, it has been a horrible mess, and I frequently get glared at since I'm the one who bought it for her.

The battery lasts for weeks with light use.

She found after one of the last updates they gave her battery life went up by quite a bit. But mostly she finds the hanging and crashing drives her insane.

If you would like to still use it I would suggest reinstalling the OS clean and see if it doesn't clear up.

Might try it. She only uses it occasionally, and increasingly it's looking like we'd probably just chuck it and get her an Android tablet or something. Just on sheer weight of the device alone, the PlayBook isn't such a great choice compared to my Nexus 7.

Re:heh

[pr0fessor]

I had to look them up. They are basically a full design, manufacturing, parts supplier, and distribution outsource and they also have Lenova as a client.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

They let the Indian government snoop in on BBM conversations ages ago. I have no reason to believe they haven't already volunteered the info to the NSA.

Re:heh

[rsborg]

I actually have a Blackberry Playbook (I realize you don't know me, so it doesn't invalidate your claim). It is really nice hardware. The OS is a little weird in places, but it is very fast. The killer is there are so few apps that I want to download. Discovery of useful apps in their store is not very easy either.

It is sad. Mostly use it for email and web surfing.

Isn't the Amazon Kindle Fire supposed to use the same/similar hardware as the Playbook used? I know I've seen both in person and they looked similar... if that's the case, then the Playbook hardware lives on spiritually in the (original) Kindle Fire, of which there are millions out there.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer (a major tertiary medical center in the Southeast US) is finally officially dumping Blackberry after several years. The humorous part is that for most employees they are getting rid of company-supplied phones altogether, and instead letting people get reimbursed for the smartphone of their choice. The program is being touted in official communications as "Bye-Bye Blackberry". That's got to make RIM wince.

Lucky you, my employer just decided to stop reimbursing employees smartphone of choice and now issues only Blackberries because apparently Blackberry and Windows are the only secure OSes and the only ones who can be securely administered remotely (read: while sitting on your arse in front of a Windows 7 box while munching on a Twinkie and slurping Pepsi Max). On top of that only Windows and Blackberry devices are allowed to access company servers which has pissed off our rather sizeable *nix department since, until this latest fit of irrationality and paranoia, our only way of accessing our e-mail was smartphones unless we wanted to drag around a Lenovo+Windows laptop for the sole purpose of accessing e-mail (no thanks). Now we have to swap out our iOS/Android devices for Blackberry and absolutely __nobody__ wants one.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently Blackberry and Windows are the only secure OSes and the only ones who can be securely administered remotely

That's odd because when I created an Exchange ActiveSync mailbox on my employer issued Android cell, it demanded I allow things such as remote wipe and remote administration. I guess that pop up was a fake...

Re:heh

[jon3k]

Mike Lazaridis will go down as the biggest tech failure in history. He took one of the most massively dominant market positions and lost it in the shortest period I've ever seen. And the only reason was his pure, blind ego.

Re:heh

[jon3k]

He said it's dead in the US and will be dead in the rest of the world 5 years. Not literally dead, obviously, as it's a company and doesn't have any corporeal form. The term means loosely that the company is on a massive, steady decline.

But feel free to ride that dying horse right into the grave, honestly, no sarcasm - you might as well. I'm not even going to argue with you over the merits of the device versus it's competitors because it doesn't matter. The simple fact of the matter is that, in a few years, the marketshare will be too small to support the company. At that point your preference won't matter, because the market won't be large enough to sustain blackberry. They lost $84M in the last quarter, even after massive layoffs. They've certainly got a couple years left, but it's going nowhere but down until then.

Re:heh

[jon3k]

(Pssst - you're one of those "retards")

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the headless chicken continues to run around the yard does not mean it's alive.

Windows Phone is dead and has been for a while. The body just hasn't realized it yet.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Nokia figure into this? They're also a massive failure.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's now up to 51,000 at last count. The fart apps are all differentiated by different frequencies.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Nexus and a Playbook. I only use the playbook. Such a nice piece of hardware.

Re:heh

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Yes, I've used iOS and Android. No thanks. I'll stick to the uncool platform that actually meets my needs.

The excellent developer tools are just icing on an already tasty cake.

Ok, I'll bite.

What are the "meets my needs" that the Blackberry is fulfilling? I'm not satisfied entirely with the iPhone or Android market, but I'm having trouble myself identifying why precisely --- what is your perspective on what both platforms are missing because I'd like another perspective on this .... thanks in advance.

Re:heh

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Someone else already said "Nokia" so spiritually I don't have anything useful to add ---- except how Microsoft keeps blowing it in the mobile/tablet market --- I guess I'm saying sure Blackberry isn't doing so "hot" --- but at the same time don't Microsoft and Nokia bear the standard for "epic fail" --- so don't be too mean to Blackberry just yet --- they've had to lay off who knows how many percent of their employees --- and they aren't evil like M$ or a donkey for M$ like Nokia --- I'm saying let the Blackberry guys give their perspective a chance and then respond to that .... doesn't hurt anyone, right? To listen I mean ...

Re:heh

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Uh --- then I want to hire this guy. Because if he himself can produce 47000 hours of apps in 6 months --- well --- he can kick your butt back and forth (or even Forth!) across the parking lot 10 times over in productivity. To you get what I'm saying here in terms of human productivity? I don't care if you know how to click Start->Programs->Calculator ---- this guy is rolling out the apps? Can you do that? If not, go have a nice hot cup of STF owned! Seriously --- you do that kind of productivity and then you can talk Windows Calculator and someone will actually care --- enough said! How many app you publish? Over 10? What are names? See my point?????

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

>One other annoying quirk that ensures I'll never be tempted to buy a BB: It only charges off its own included charger, and my Samsung S3's charger. No other charger works

That's a lie. BB devices do what almost all other devices do as per spec when attached to a non-host power supply. They look for the two data pins shorted with 0-200 ohms of resistance. I converted some random chargers by simply shorting the two data pins (as per spec) and they work just fine. All those were 6+ year old chargers, so no surprise they do not comply to specs. I have purchased a few dozen chargers since, they have all functioned out of the box. Various brands, mostly cheap China junk (yeah, safety, yadda-yadda).

>We probably have 25 or 30 USB chargers around the house, in the cars, etc., for a bunch of devices - we have several iPods around, an iPad, iPhones, my Samsung phone, my Asus tablet, plus a bunch more chargers of various brands.

Apple chargers, on the other hand, use a proprietary non-standard to indicate they're supplying non-host power. It should come as no surprise that proprietary junk doesn't work as expected on anything but the name brand it came with.

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/bq24392.pdf
http://blog.curioussystem.com/2010/08/the-dirty-truth-about-usb-device-charging/

Re:heh

[MikeBabcock]

I've used one, I have clients with them, and they're dreadfully slow and bulky by my standards.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have done, but it was only available for iOS and Android.

Re:heh

[MightyMartian]

Between the large scale acceptance of touchscreens and Apple and Google licensing ActiveSync, that is what has made BlackBerry's irrelevant.

Re:heh

[Eivind]

They are. They had 75% of the smartphone-market. Now they've got like 3% of the smartphone market.

Since that's a pretty big market, 3% is still plenty of devices sold, but it's hardly possible to have a steeper decline in marketshare than they've had.

Re:heh

[Falkentyne]

So.. Firefox OS?

Re:heh

[occasional_dabbler]

Not quite

Re:heh

[occasional_dabbler]

Forgot the quotes, sorry about that

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that like the vast majority of tablets, the first PB model had wifi in place of requiring an expensive cell contract? Your comment reeks of 'written by Apple fanboi'.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

If spammy apps and pointless apps were a metric for why the count of apps is a pointless, even misleading, metric, then they're just as, if not more pointless for i* and Android.

Re:heh

[RaceProUK]

Just because the headless chicken continues to run around the yard does not mean it's alive.

Mike the Headless Chicken lived for two years with no head.

Re:heh

[P-niiice]

Any company with the ability to produce a product is one new product away from success, so you shouldn't call them dead until they're really, really dead (cannot design and produce new products).

Re:heh

[P-niiice]

With windows 8, and RT, Ms could be on that list if Xbox one fails the way they seem to want it to.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the innuendo.

Re:heh

[hhw]

They had 75% of the smartphone market at a time when smartphones were a much smaller portion of the overall mobile phone market. Their drop has not been anywhere near as precipitous as the 96% drop you suggest.

Re:heh

[durnurd]

The excellent developer tools are just icing on an already tasty cake.

Are you implying that the developer tools for Blackberry are excellent? I've worked extensively with developer tools for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile 6.5 when that was a thing, J2ME, and, yes, Blackberry. Blackberry's tools aren't the *worst* of the mobile platforms available... but they're pretty close.

Re:heh

[Eivind]

Not in number-of-units-sold, no. But in brainshare ? Seriously -- at this point blackberries are "legacy", a few folks use them because that's what they're used to or that's what their bussiness is adapted to, but pretty much zero -new- users come in.

Re:heh

[ConfusedVorlon]

the smartphone market isn't necessarily a great baseline.

making up numbers completely, It could be argued:

they had 90% of the corporate_mobile_email_phone device market.
They now have 60% of the corporate_mobile_email_phone device market.

the broader smartphone market has exploded, and apart from a few niches where bbm is valued highly, they have almost completely failed to succeed in the new market.

not that I don't think they're dead - just that I like alternate perspectives!

Re:heh

[narcc]

I take it you haven't worked with them any time in the past few years. Check them out, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

On your list, if I had to pick the worse of the bunch, Android would very likely come out on top. It's an abomination.

Re:heh

[Eivind]

That's the thing though, I HIGHLY doubt they've got 60% of the corporate mobile email phone market. Unless you define that market in a so contrived way that most people who have a corporate-bought phone that's primarily used for reading email on the go, are not included.

Not a single one of the 10 biggest corporations where I'm at even offers blackberry as an option. They've all either standardised on Iphones or some Android-model, or they give employees a choice between 2-3 models, none of which are made by RIM.

Re:heh

[OakDragon]

That is true - it was a stretch, but I went for it.

Re:heh

[Skater]

The difference is in how your phones are set up, not because the BB is inherently better. If your employer supported the iPhone instead of the BB, your experience would be exactly opposite. It's not the iPhone's fault your employer makes it jump through hoops to log in.

Re:heh

[ArhcAngel]

You're right...my employer insists on a secure connection which the iPhone still isn't completely capable of on its own. Therefor only limited access for iOS devices. And as much complaining as I hear about the BES administration the way profiles are handled on iOS is mind bogglingly insane. However even if we were an iOS shop communication would still be easier on a BB IMNSHO.

47k apps from one person?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same app submitted under thousands of names - in the hope that some will "buy to try"...

Re:47k apps from one person?

[kasperd]

The same app submitted under thousands of names - in the hope that some will "buy to try"...

Yeah, that can hardly be called development. How much effort does one have to put into developing an app in order to produce something new? I don't think you can do much in one day.

Putting this number in some perspective, the oldest person ever lived for 44724 days. So nobody would reach 47k applications at one per day.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[i kan reed]

Yeah, but if all you're changing is a config file that has queryurl="amazon.com?search=[value]" and backgroundcolor="green", you could probably release 100 a day.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[gstoddart]

Putting this number in some perspective, the oldest person ever lived for 44724 days. So nobody would reach 47k applications at one per day.

Maybe not 'real' applications, but the 'give me some money, advertising revenue, and access to your personal information' things.

This is not too different from pushing penny stocks -- they're mostly worthless, but if you can convince someone else to buy it from you, you can still make money.

And it sounds like BB is perfectly willing to allow this to happen, likely so they can have the illusion that there are in fact apps for the platform.

I think it pretty much sums up their current state -- dying, and desperately hoping that someone else will write something to make their platform compelling.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[jcr]

If you have any scripting skills at all, you could do a lot more than that.

-jcr

Re:47k apps from one person?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this like how most applications out there are terrible? 90% of all applications are cheap soundboards or other gimmicky applications.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[vux984]

And it sounds like BB is perfectly willing to allow this to happen, likely so they can have the illusion that there are in fact apps for the platform.

Its a mind bogglingly stupid numbers game. The reality is that 100,000 or 2,000,000 apps in an app store is a completely worthless indication.

Their was guy who won "every game on steam" back in 2011 has ~1800 games. Now I'm sure there are dozens (even hundreds?) of titles added since then. But still we're capping out at 2500 titles.

Now that's certainly not every game ever made, and it certainly leaves out some first class titles as well, and its just games not 'apps' (maps, messaging, note taking, document editing, cloud storage access, etc etc etc etc...)

But it gives you sense of the scale of a 'big app store' that REALLY has honest to goodness curation.

So realistically there are probably quite a bit less than 20,000 "real" apps. And if you took out the games, and just looked at the productivity stuff people needed the number of titles that anyone actually cares about likely numbers in the low hundreds.

So 100,000 apps? A million? Two million? Its all mostly just truly worthless garbage.

An app store with the right apps could be "fully stocked" and "compelling" with more than everything its customer base would really need or want or care about with as few as 500-1500 apps.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[Megane]

I would have trouble coming up with 47k app names. It's hard enough just trying to come up with sane function and variable names in namespaces two or three orders of magnitude smaller.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[msobkow]

If a shell script is an "app", then the bar has been set too low.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it. You use the scripts to change key parts of the apps so that you can churn out different apps all day long.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[poity]

You know, I bet if I wrote an ebook guide on how to unlock your front door with your house key, it would sell a few. If it takes me 5 minutes to knock one of these guides out, and I can get a handful of 99 cent downloads a year on each of them, I can make a pretty nice living. Oh crap nobody steal my ideal now.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[msobkow]

If you are using a shell script to "generate" apps, then the bar has been set even lower than I first thought. :(

Re:47k apps from one person?

[i kan reed]

Does your guide cover the "Lock covered in tiny venomous spiders" case? If not, I'm going to need a refund.

Re:47k apps from one person?

[Quirkz]

That's surprisingly complicated at times. Last weekend a property manager gave me a key to an interior office rather than the front door. I had to go around back, find a window with an AC unit, pull it out, and climb in. The people I was with looked at me like I was crazy, despite the fact I had a key in my hand and an invitation to enter the property.

was noticing this on Google Play

[Anonymous Coward]

There was one dev that had the same app (if you can call it that) with the same name listed about 20 times with a different graphic image for the link.

Re:was noticing this on Google Play

[Anonymous Coward]

There was one dev that had the same app (if you can call it that) with the same name listed about 20 times with a different graphic image for the link.

I see those a lot as well. I also see people pushing "ringtone" apps or "wallpaper" apps which just open up a web browser session and connect to some site or another.

The biggest problem, and with all the markets, is that it's easy to get a "top rating" even when your apps are shit. If you make enough money for the people who own the store, you get a top rating. If you get enough raw download numbers, you get a top rating. If you get enough astroturfers rating your app up, you get a top rating.

This xkcd sums up the major problem with all the app stores: http://xkcd.com/937/

better than the alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have an app store full of spammy apps than one that rejects good apps for no reason (or because they compete with the manufacturer's own apps)

Re:better than the alternative

[osu-neko]

I'd rather have an app store full of spammy apps than one that rejects good apps for no reason (or because they compete with the manufacturer's own apps)

You may very well think that, but market forces dictate success, as noted, and the market seems to think it's better to have an app store where you can actually find useful applications because they're not buried under a mountain of crap.

Re:better than the alternative

[NatasRevol]

According to sales figures, just about no one agrees with you.

Re:better than the alternative

[Tom]

Then you are an idiot.

Spam is the #1 problem of the information age, because information becomes meaningless when it is drowned in noise. The only reason that the Internet is still useable is because we are fighting a constant war on spam.

Imagine for a minute E-Mail without spam filters. I mean entirely without. No blacklisting, no taking spam ISPs offline, no IP filter, no greylisting, no spamassassin, no gmail you put in front of your real mail just for the filtering - absolutely nothing of that.

Now imagine search engines with no effort to filter out the spam. Imagine a Google that doesn't downrank spammy sites.

Imagine telemarketers being allowed to call you whenever they want, as often as they want.

If you have any imagination whatsoever, you'll agree that spam is a really huge issue. If you have really good imagination, you might want to apply for therapy after this traumatic minute.

So, apps are like the ones for Windows 8 then?

[WillAffleckUW]

it sure does sound like all those Win 8 apps nobody uses ...

BlackBerry Wanted Numbers, SB44 gave them numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

As far a marketing is concerned this is a symbiotic relationship. Long live SB44,.... no wait, he was more then 1/3rd of our numbers, and now the world knows?

wtf do we do now, uber weaselly marketing speak follows. (watch for it)

Better than Some

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these, useless as they may be, still sound to be more useful than fart apps.

Re:Better than Some

[xevioso]

The guy who made iFart made 80,000$ within two weeks of launch.

Re:Better than Some

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that make it useful?

Re:Better than Some

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who made iFart made 80,000$ within two weeks of launch.

There is no god.

The company is purely virtual...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to the company website at http://www.s4bb.com/about/, you find its location as :

S4BB Limited
1104 Crawford House
70 Queen’s Road Central
Central
Hong Kong

Interestingly, this address is a virtual office, as shown on

http://www.jumpstartoffices.com/eng/virtual-office/hong-kong/crawford-house/

This means that you have no slightest idea of where this company is located...

Re:The company is purely virtual...

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that you have no slightest idea of where this company is located...

Well DUH, they're not located anywhere man, they're in The Cloud!

Welll I am guessing that S4BB stands for

[totalnet]

spam for BlackBerry.

Re:Welll I am guessing that S4BB stands for

[Anonymous Coward]

spam for BlackBerry.

It's actually Spam for BlackBerry Free.

Re:Welll I am guessing that S4BB stands for

[Anonymous Coward]

You're modded funny, but this does in fact match S4BB perfectly. I'm wondering if the person(s) doing the apps was doing a minor jab at their employer...

S4BB, Chinese app factory

[Anonymous Coward]

S4BB has offices in HK and literally a warehouse of devs in China. They churn this shovelware out. No surprise Blackberry eats it all up.

FIRST POST!

[localman57]

FIRST POST! -This automated post is a service of S4BB Slashdot First Post Blackberry App

Re:FIRST POST!

[operagost]

Your automated post was BLOCKED FROM VIEWING by S4BB Slashdot First Post Blocker Blackberry App

It's amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Blackberry is suffering is because no jounralists post anything positive, ever.

Re:It's amazing

[Adult film producer]

IF reviewers actually take the time to use one they tend to enjoy the experience..,

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-6452_7-57584791/forced-to-live-with-bb10-and-kind-of-liking-it/

I love mine, that's all I know.

Pot, Kettle, Black.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really this is a pot calling a kettle black. Android of all the platforms has the most useless number of apps.

Re:Pot, Kettle, Black.

[Russ1642]

Go and add a million completely useless apps to the Google Play store and it would have no effect whatsoever. It's not like people actually go and install them. (those that do are the same ones who respond to Nigerian prince scams)

most of them don't add value???

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do they think they are, the apple app store?

Allow me to put the media on some fucking knowledg

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to put the media on some fucking knowledge here that should give them nightmares.

I am a born and raised Southern boy. I am not from a family of rednecks. My ancestral family tree skipped "redneck" and shot straight to "hillbilly".

For every ONE card carrying NRA hat wearing gun owner you see, be advised that there are, depending on locale, anywhere from 100-10,000 other gun nuts in the general vicinity who don't belong to the NRA because they don't feel the NRA is doing enough for gun rights. That's right, candy-asses. They don't feel the NRA is STRONG ENOUGH ON GUN RIGHTS.

I let my membership lapse in the 90s since I, and a lot of others, felt the NRA screwed the pooch on not fighting the AWB and the Brady Bill hard enough. I didn't even renew until sometime in the early 2004 timeframe. I have at least a dozen friends on my phone contact list right now who are rabid gun lovers and they will laugh at you when you push the NRA as a viable organization for them.

I love this idée fixe the media has with the NRA. It's why you keep getting your asses handed to you in the voting booth. Please keep fucking that particular chicken.

YOU FAIL iT

[Anonymous Coward]

to the crowd in knows for sure 3hat Java IRC client real problems fanatic known FreeBSD at about 80 future at all asshole to others

Re:YOU FAIL iT

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Why do you post a link to a pumpkin imitation of a gaping asshole rather than a real gaping asshole?

Fake blackberry skin has some value.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

One of the old posts in slashdot suggested people with desirable phones like iPhones and Samsung androids to get fake blackberry like skin to make the phone less attractive to thieves and snatchers. So if Blackberry copyrights the skin design they can actually make some money off their own suckitude.

Re:Fake blackberry skin has some value.

[Anonymous Coward]

[form factors are not copyrighted, they are patented with what's called a design patent - look it up]

Re:Fake blackberry skin has some value.

[evilviper]

get fake blackberry like skin to make the phone less attractive to thieves and snatchers

Good God... This was Microsoft's secret plan with the Zune all along! They'll make BILLIONS

Ebook, Audiobook, Comicbook

[ZombieBraintrust]

Doesn't Apple and Android also allow selling books as apps? Then you have all the apps that are little more than portals to websites. All of these are legit. Looking at counts is pretty silly.

Re:Ebook, Audiobook, Comicbook

[Anonymous Coward]

And both platforms likely have more in raw numbers terms and maybe even in % terms.

But are they all from one company?

Just like the other app stores

[kcloud]

Nothing new about this. 60% of the apps in the Apple app store have never been downloaded. Android apps the same. The whole argument about who has the most apps, or if a lot of them are useless spammy apps seems a bit pointless. If your going to single out one platform, that is. http://bit.ly/Rfb9FV

47K out of 120K

[wisnoskij]

So basically one person wrote half of all of the BB apps?

Re:47K out of 120K

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me you're an accountant.

Re:47K out of 120K

[Anonymous Coward]

try 40%

Re:47K out of 120K

[amicusNYCL]

One company, and 40%.

Re:Allow me to put the media on some fucking knowl

[Anonymous Coward]

It's why you keep getting your asses handed to you in the voting booth.

Yeah, that President Romney sure is a bummer for us, not to mention the GOP-controlled Senate.

Start rounding up the circular firing squad for 2016, Zed. Maybe we can get Rick Perry to forget what branch of government he wants to shut down during a nationally televised debate again.

Re:Allow me to put the media on some fucking knowl

[Anonymous Coward]

The world's oldest civil rights organization, the NRA, isn't the same group of people assassinating Americans overseas, collecting your email, and harassing political opponents. Those are the exclusive province of the Obama administration.

No utility whatsoever?

[timmyf2371]

While I'm sure there are plenty of apps on all platforms that have no utility whatsoever, the submitter did a poor job in selecting some of the apps in the BB App World that would be worthy of this description.

Restart me free: Seems useful enough in that it allows a restart of the device without having pull the battery. Is it really any less useful than creating a shortcut which opens the All Apps menu on the Windows 8 start menu?
Daily Quote: I would have no use for this app, however this doesn't diminish the value it has to the people who use it.
Silent Foto Free: as the name suggests, this app lets you take photos without the shutter noise. Could be useful in some situations; taking photos at a chess tournament immediately comes to mind.
Lock for SMS: lets you PIN protect any app on the device. Surely ideal for parents wanting to stop their youngsters from accessing particular apps?
Search for Amazon: looks like it simply redisplays the Amazon mobile site in an app and adds a few features e.g. writing a review into the native interface. In the absence of an official Amazon app for the Blackberry, it may well be useful for the avid Amazon shopper.

Re:No utility whatsoever?

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely agree. This is just another stupid Blackberry bashing article. What is with America's hate for Blackberry. I recently saw a CNN article on Hilary Clinton, about how she could be the next President. In it there were all kinds of pictures, and a lot of them had her CLEARLY holding a Blackberry. Every caption said things like, "Hilary checking her PDA". You can be sure if it was an iPhone, they would not have called it a PDA.

If you do not own a Z10 and bash Blackberry you are just ignorant and uninformed.

Re:No utility whatsoever?

[6ULDV8]

Search for Amazon: looks like it simply redisplays the Amazon mobile site in an app and adds a few features e.g. writing a review into the native interface. In the absence of an official Amazon app for the Blackberry, it may well be useful for the avid Amazon shopper.

Especially while shopping for a new phone.

Re:No utility whatsoever?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's more like the "Wikipedia books" by Books LLC or VDM Publishing, or perhaps the more creative approach of Philip M. Parker. You generate a lot of stuff that nobody's interested in, but every now and then, you create something people actually buy. If the costs are low enough, it's even profitable.

Re:No utility whatsoever?

[OhHellWithIt]

Search for Amazon: looks like it simply redisplays the Amazon mobile site in an app and adds a few features e.g. writing a review into the native interface. In the absence of an official Amazon app for the Blackberry, it may well be useful for the avid Amazon shopper.

Given the tortoise-like speed of BlackBerry's web browser, just about anything that could be done on the web is better done in a BlackBerry app. When Google made a search app that ran on my BlackBerry, I used it all the time. Then I lost my copy of that app in a wipe/reload, and the newer version of their app won't install on my device, so now I have to use the web browser. In the time it takes for the search page to load, I can generally get to a computer or Android tablet and enter my query there instead. (Admittedly, I'm using a 3-year-old device on Verizon 3G, but still....)

Re:No utility whatsoever?

[Thud457]

Until someone who buys your random numbers app sues you for your numbers being insufficiently random.

Reminds me...

[Skiron]

...of the hundreds of silly VB programmes around found on the *free* sites in the late '90's~ that opened the CD Tray on Windows machines.

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .opened the CD Tray on Windows machines

The cup holder?

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you open the CD Tray on a Windows machine? Off the top of my head I can only think of Computer > right click drive > Eject, so a one-click utility to do it was useful.

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read about this countless times, but in all the decades I've worked on PCs with CDs I've never had direct experience of someone thinking it was a cup holder.

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

#include <Windows.h>
int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE a, HINSTANCE b, LPSTR c, UNIT d){
    mciSendStringA("open cdaudio",0,0,0);
    mciSendStringA("set cdaudio door open",0,0,0);
    mciSendStringA("close cdaudio",0,0,0);
    return 0;
}

Re:Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a HUGE demand for cup holders...

what's in between bankruptcy and dead?

[raymorris]

"Chapter 11 is far from dead. "

Far, huh? What's the distance, as in what exists between bankrupt (Kodak) and dead?
Their income is down 70% over the last five years. Sure, the last five years have sucked for everyone, but a 70% drop is perilously close to 100%.

That said, it WAS a huge company 20 years ago, so even after shutting down most of the company they still had half a billion in revenue for 2012.

Re:what's in between bankruptcy and dead?

[ColdWetDog]

I'm happy! I think I'll go for a walk!

Re:what's in between bankruptcy and dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're only mostly dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

The same thing happens on Android

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a few people that make money from Android by literally making shitty time-waster or simple apps that have ad-space for much better apps and sell it to other devs.
They make like >£100 a month off it alone for an app.

So many of them are dupes of each other with different skins as well, basically, or slightly different layouts, different fonts.
Policing it would be a nightmare. But would it be morally right or wrong to?
It is a hard thing to cut either way because in one sense limiting freedom is just going to piss people off, but trying to police copycat or money-grab apps would equally be hard, especially since a bunch actually have really good ratings. (either through flood-rating high scores or legit)

Re:The same thing happens on Android

[XcepticZP]

It's rather simple to police. Just disable the ability of apps to deliver advertising. Only police that, and the majority of the apps you mention would be worthless.

And once you've instituted that policy, then you can remove apps with a less than 100 downloads per year, or at whatever level you want. Apps need to be useful, and you need to trim the list of apps down every once in a while.

The more of these silly apps and their variations exist, the more useless garbage noise I have when searching for an app I REALLY want to use.

The whole advertising model for apps may have improved the ecosystem and quantity of apps initially. But it's getting worse as app clone developers get more desperate, and people get more wise to filtering out the spam apps. This happened with normal web advertisements, and look where we are now.

Re: The same thing happens on Android

[tepples]

A strict interpretation of no ads in apps would kill Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist apps, which are designed to let users search for sellers advertising products that interest them.

Re:The same thing happens on Android

[gnasher719]

And once you've instituted that policy, then you can remove apps with a less than 100 downloads per year, or at whatever level you want. Apps need to be useful, and you need to trim the list of apps down every once in a while.

There are certainly apps that are very, very useful but only to a very small number of people. Why would you discriminate against them?

Re:The same thing happens on Android

[XcepticZP]

Discriminate? You make it sound dirty... It's cleaning up the market place so that it's easier to find apps that are truly useful, to a moderately sized group of people. At some point, having thousands of useless/trivial apps will lower the value of the entire marketplace.

I would pay a monthly subscription fee for such an app store. Really, I would. Even if I wasn't buying every month, I'd still do it. I want it entirely unlikely for useless apps to ever find it profitable to spam the marketplace, even from the tiny tiny proportion of people that will buy the app by accident and forget to ask for a refund.

Port-A-Thon

[leglock]

I wonder if they got filthy rich during the Blackberry Port-A-Thon.

Having had all three platforms

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I far and away prefer the Android.
I had an ancient BB World edition, for the QWERTY keyboard (and that's about all it could do well, text/email)
A had an Android tablet (tegra quad core something, cost me a pretty penny too) and the Android app store was quite easy to search.
I now have an iPhone 4 and I *hate* it, typing any text it terrible, not least of which for the constant autocorrect getting in the way, but it's very difficult to find anything useful in the app store (a battery meter that displays a numerical percentage for example)
I've encountered more BS apps in the Apple world than I ever did in the Android environment.
Next phone will be an Android.

Re:Having had all three platforms

[radish]

Settings -> General -> Usage -> Battery Percentage -> On
Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Auto-Correction -> Off
Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Check Spelling -> Off

You're welcome :)

Re:Having had all three platforms

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Well I'll be damned...would be nice is a manual was included that mentioned this stuff...

Re:Having had all three platforms

[radish]

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf

You're welcome! :)

When app stores become a numbers game...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the dark side of competition in a capitalist society. Company A needs to appear as 'successful' as Company B, so will use any affordable tactic to do so, even to the point of 'bending' the law. Intel is doing the same thing with its laughable attempt to take on ARM. Likewise Microsoft's laughable attempt to take on Android and iOS.

And of course the cheats and liars have mountains of cash to pay off tech sites and tech 'journalists', so that the lies are given apparent legitimacy by industry 'experts' that ordinary people read and trust. But the lies and cheating only helps lull the weaker and more incompetent management in failing companies to a false sense of security about mid-term prospects. It is the companies themselves (especially Intel and Microsoft at this time) that drink their own 'kool-aid'.

For Blackberry to pay (under the table) dishonest development companies to inflate the apparent number of apps in their store only ruins the enthusiasm genuine developers have for the platform. In Blackberry are crooks who will have their salary and bonuses significantly boosted by this tactic- until the bubble bursts and they have to move on. Such people do not care that their cynical tactics ruin the real prospects for a company's future success.

Anyway, none of this matters. ARM, Apple and Google are the massive long term winners in the new mobile space. The genius of ARM is that it encourages (unlike with the x86) multiple companies to design and produce the parts, so the ARM SoC market follows true Darwinian principles, where the best in each category (performance, cost, power-usage etc) becomes dominant in the different parts of the marketplace. Offering a service outside of iOS and Android (or using a processor other than ARM) is completely moronic. Winning companies will accept reality, and jump on the dominant bandwagons (like smart computer manufactures did when it was clear the x86 based PC was becoming the one true standard).

Meanwhile expect ever more desperate shills do shout ever louder that CP/M and the Z80- whoops, I mean Microsoft and Intel's x86- will be around for ever.

Spammy SSD drives

[gnasher719]

47,000 apps is nothing.

I was looking to buy an SSD drive, so I tried amazon.co.uk. Entered "SSD" into search, restricted departments to "Computers and accessories".

There are 96,000 different SSD drives for sale. 95,500 are sold by the same company. Their list of drives are: Assholecompany 64 GB SSD drive for Acer obscure model 1. Assholecompany 64 GB SSD drive for Acer obscure model 2. Assholecompany 64 GB SSD drive for Acer obscure model 3. .... Assholecompany 64 GB SSD drive for Zenith obscure model 497.

Sorry, the name isn't assholecompany, it is "Arch Memory". They are basically performing a DOS attack against anyone else trying to sell SSD drives on Amazon.co.uk.

Re:Spammy SSD drives

[Smiffa2001]

The easy way out of this is not to shop Amazon. Yep, that's the easy thing to say, but for me, a few pounds more with ebuyer or dabs and I know there's no dicking around like this...

Re:Spammy SSD drives

[AmiMoJo]

Years ago a place I worked at tried that with laptop LCD panels on Google. It worked for a while but then Google removed over 100,000 entires for individual models. In reality there were about 15 different model panels covering 99.9% of laptops.

For entering text

[tepples]

Continued availability of devices with physical thumb keyboards, for one. Apple refuses to make an iPhone with one, and fewer and fewer Android phones have them.

I bet his mother is proud of him.

[Narcocide]

Too bad though that because of people like him mine will never be proud of me. :(

Re:I bet his mother is proud of him.

[tgd]

Too bad though that because of people like him mine will never be proud of me. :(

Slashdot is still proud of you!

Yup

[Bogtha]

This just reinforces what I said the other day about Apple's App Store approval process really making a difference to the quality of the applications available for iOS.

Apple have a rule in their guidelines:

2.20 Developers "spamming" the App Store with many versions of similar Apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

And the Apple and Android app stores are better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd wager that the ratio of quality to garbage apps in the BB app store is higher than in the other two.

Not quite

[Camael]

Not the design, or IP though .

Under the agreement, Kodak will divest its entire digital camera manufacturing requirements to Flextronics, including assembly, production, and testing. Flextronics will also manage the operations and logistics services for Kodak's digital still cameras. Kodak will continue to develop the high- level system design, product look and feel and user experience, and will conduct advanced research and development for its digital still cameras. Kodak will also retain its intellectual property.

Its not a guy...

[Camael]

its a company.

Judging from their corporate picture, might be a team of 13.

Re:Its not a guy...

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Oops! Serves me right for not reading TFA ...

Becasuse there are already millions of useless app

[Anonymous Coward]

Becasuse there are already millions of useless apps on the Google store, and millions in the iPay store. Therefore adding a million completely useless apps displays no useful difference to the "eXPerience" of a shitload of useless apps on there.

The real loser is Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere, a team of MS strategists is wondering why they didn't get this guy to make 47k apps for the Windows 8 app store!

The $10,000 App Guarantee

[macshome]

I feel fairly sure that the $10,000 app guarantee had something to do with this. With 47K apps the odds that more than a few will cross the $1,000 threshold are pretty good.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17926037

Mission Statement

[B.Stolk]

This shows you what mission statements are worth.
(Less than used toilet paper)

"To continuously enrich the end-user experience of high quality mobile software."
http://www.s4bb.com/about/