With the impending launch of BlackBerry 10, down trodden Research In Motion (RIM) is trying to pull out all the stops to help buoy its upcoming Operating System and phones. The Canadian smartphone maker is waving cash at app developers by offering them incentives like the Built for BlackBerry and the $10K Developer Commitment.
The bold strategy from RIM is a move to support the developer community that works on BlackBerry apps. The company has learned the hard way that their phones will have a tough time in the market if there is no App ecosystem to support their products. As iPhone has shown, a well made app store with an active developer community can pay back huge dividends.
The Built for BlackBerry program will allow develops to submit their creations for free. Developers have a choice of submitting products for either BlackBerry 10 WebWorks or BlackBerry 10 Native apps. Developers will also get a “Built for BlackBerry” quality status. This can be used freely to market services and the app.
The $10K Developer Commitment is another interesting program which guarantees a $10,000 payout to participants whose apps generate at least $1000 in sales including in app purchases. The program will kick off this fall and developers will need to submit their apps before the BlackBerry World conference next year.
The programs do come with some strings attached but most of the guidelines revealed so far seem reasonable. RIM has stated the under the programs there will be only payout for each developer and the app must have a minimum of 100 unique downloads. The submitted apps must also successfully go through the “Built for Blackberry” approval process.
RIM has a lot riding on its BB 10 release because of the difficulties it has faced in the past couple of years dealing with competition from Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The downward spiral of the once dominant smart phone maker may rest on its latest release and it seems the company knows this and is trying its best to survive.
Source: BlackBerry Blog
Photo: Neowin
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