When BlackBerry was close to launching its latest BlackBerry 10 hardware and software at the start of this year, the Canadian company made it known that at the time of launch its app store, BlackBerry World, would boast 70,000 apps. The Waterloo-based company kept its promise and made 70,000 apps available to BlackBerry users on January 31st, when it unveiled the all-touch Z10 smartphone. Roughly a couple of months after that, BlackBerry was gearing up to launch its BB10 hardware and software in the US, the company announced that apps in BlackBerry World would reach the 100,000 mark by the time it would make its device available in America. Once again BlackBerry managed to fulfil its promise and as a result many praised the company for keeping its promise. Although the number of apps in BlackBerry World have increased since only a few might have noticed that out of its 120,000 apps in the app store, 47,000 apps were made by one developer, S4BB.
This unknown developer S4BB has not only submitted 47,000 apps in the BlackBerry World, but on top of it most of them are low quality applications. A lot of them are audio books, city guides, phrasebooks and similar products. The submission of these low quality apps by one developer clearly indicates that the only focus of S4BB was to produce apps in quantity rather than focusing on quality. They were able to get the apps in thanks to the tolerant publishing rules in the application catalogue that allowed the anonymous developer to submit apps in such a big quantity.
Another major reason behind this big submission of apps one developer is that BlackBerry failed to lure other developers, which includes several top app developers like Spotify that has declined to build a native app for the platform. In addition to this, popular photo sharing social network Instagram also declined to build app for BB10. So now if we take out 47,000 apps of S4BB from 120,000 apps in BlackBerry World, it will leave behind only 73,000 apps that is almost the same number of applications which BlackBerry had achieved at the time of BB10’s launch.
In contrast to BlackBerry, Microsoft’s Windows Phone has made 150,000 apps available to its users since its launch. This suggests that BlackBerry is really struggling to push its latest hardware and software in the smartphone market. And because of this very reason it has been getting really difficult for the Canadian smartphone maker to compete against Samsung’s Android range, Apple’s iPhone and Windows Phone as well.
Source: PhoneArena