Although 2012 has felt like the end of the world for RIM, perhaps the company and their leadership were taught to look for silver linings in even the darkest of storms. The company recently had reason to celebrate, as their BlackBerry App World reached 3 billion downloads earlier this month.
All in all, it has taken theWaterloobased firm just over three years to reach the milestone. For the sake of comparison, the same feat was accomplished by Apple’s App Store in 18 months and by Android’s Market (now Google Play) in 27 months. The biggest positive to come out of the news has to do with how downloads have occurred over time. Although it took over two years for the App World to achieve 2 billion downloads, the final 1 billion have occurred over the past 6 months.
The download totals include everything from wallpapers and themes to games and the like. The App World currently features 90,000 apps for BlackBerry’s Smartphones and PlayBook tablets. Apple, Android and Windows Phone all feature 100,000 plus apps.
Although the news is well and good, the fate of RIM remains to be seen. With the recently announced delay of new devices and most importantly its BB10 platform to next year, the company seems to be running in circles while its main competitors sprint ahead. Android recently introduced their new 4.1 platform Jellybean while Apple is set to launch iOS 6 as well as a potential new standard setter in their sixth generation iPhone. If that wasn’t enough, we would be hard pressed to forget Microsoft and their impressive looking Windows 8 platform also arriving before BB10.
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