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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Exitar]

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

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

[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

[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.

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...

Welll I am guessing that S4BB stands for

[totalnet]

spam for BlackBerry.

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.

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

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.

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:47k apps from one person?

[jcr]

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

-jcr

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.

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?

[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:47K out of 120K

[amicusNYCL]

One company, and 40%.

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.

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.

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: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.