Just before the launch of BlackBerry 10 on US soil, the app store for the Waterloo-based company, BlackBerry World, managed to achieve the 100,000 app mark. This was an incredible feat for the company especially considering the fact that BlackBerry was able to complete the task in less than two months after the launch of the latest BB10 hardware and software. In spite of this success, several tech analysts have criticizes BlackBerry for porting a lot of apps from the Android platform in order to boost its app numbers. However, the reality is that to date roughly 20 percent of the applications on BlackBerry World are ported from Android and the remaining 80 percent were specifically coded for the BB10 platform. Therefore, by all means it is an impressive number for a platform that is hardly two months old.
So it’s a big victory for BlackBerry because native or Android, the Canadian smartphone manufacturer is effectively attracting developers to the platform and numbers matter at the end of the day. Even if you take out the 20 percent ported apps from the Android platform, BlackBerry still has its own 80,000 apps. Nevertheless, ported apps from Android are mostly key apps and one cannot overlook them. Moreover, BlackBerry has yet to drag a lot of key apps to its new platform in order to compete against rivals.
Unfortunately, these efforts from BlackBerry received a big blow when Netflix and Instagram showed no interest in developing an app for BB10, still the company managed to handle the situation by making popular messaging app, WhatsApp available on its platform. So far BlackBerry World houses a good selection of applications. To the extent missing key apps are concerned their Android ports are obtainable and despite the fact that they possibly will not be native to BlackBerry 10, they will still work and this is what matters in the end.
Vice President for Global Alliances and Business Development at BlackBerry, Martyn Mallick told AllThingsD during an interview that, “We give them a very nice on-ramp to get onto the platform. Our users deserve to have great content. If that is the fastest way we can get some of that content, that’s great.”
BlackBerry World managed to grow at such an incredible pace only because BlackBerry leaned on the vast stock of Android apps. In the end BlackBerry was not only able to pull a very large number of apps to its platform, but it was also able to save money because porting apps is cheaper in contrast to specifically coded apps.
Source: TechCrunch
Squarespace Commerce Comes To Canada With Updated Service
Gartner Report Indicates Increase In Global IT Spending For Next Two Years
Lunches So Good Kids Can’t Ignore Them
Invigorating Ginger Smoothie
The U.K.’s Youngest Parents Ever
The new hair Jennifer Lawrence