
RIM announces US$100M investment to grow BlackBerry developer community - jackyyappp
http://e27.sg/2012/07/10/research-in-motion-announces-us100m-investment-to-grow-developer-community-for-blackberry-platform/
======
Zenst
Wow, so you can still bribe people in some ways.

I must say its all very well handing out free tablets etc and offering
incentives but maybe getting a few key applications ported and even paying to
get them ported would be a better investment.

Reason I say this is having read this part "One of such programs incentivizes
developers to build apps for BlackBerry 10 by guaranteeing the developers
US$10,000 in revenues from the app. While the official terms and conditions
for this program has not yet been released, Alec Saunders, VP of Developer
Relations highlighted that apps that qualify for the program must be
certified, paid apps built for the BlackBerry 10 and manage to earn at least
US$1,000 within the first year."

Well It's hard not to think I could write a application - charge $10 or
whatever price and get a few friends to buy that application and from the
little time involved to code a "HELLO WORLD" application and get upon the
blackberry market and the $1,000 friend investment of which I get a return on.
Well I'd then qualify for $10,000.

So in effect the way they are doing this they are opening themself up to being
scammed! Sorry but that is how alot will see this approach sadly. Also given
the return then why not.

So I hope RIM rethinks this approach and does something more creative. Maybe
pick a university and go in with a couple of people who know the RIM platform
for developers - give a intro - hand out tablets for the student use for a few
months so they can write an application and then those worthy they help
promote and get onto the market offering support.

If they also used some of this money to have a developer help line ( no no not
samaratins before you joke) but one were a developer can chat online and get
questions answeared so they can speed up there application development then
again they will gain.

Also If I was RIM CEO I'd look at large consumer markets like military and the
like who are starting to embrace tablets and the like and with that at least
gain some steady staple income to at least garantee some future.

But as this approach goes as they outlined I feel it will do them no favours.

~~~
rrreese
Your comment is somewhat hyperbolic and misinformed.

Firstly the Blackberry program outlined is not a bribe. They are clearly
digging in and offering large incentives, but lets not throw "bribery" around.

Secondly the $10k program is not going to be a free for all, it will be
offered to "... apps that qualify for the program must be certified, paid apps
built for the BlackBerry 10 and manage to earn at least US$1,000 within the
first year". If anything it sounds like Blackberry will make it difficult to
get the $10k, since they define the certification process.

What this situation does show is how important having a group of developers
working on apps is for mobile platforms these days. It seems that in future it
will be much harder for other entrants to enter the market as no matter how
great your device and platform, if you don't have any apps for it, people will
not buy it.

~~~
masklinn
> If anything it sounds like Blackberry will make it difficult to get the
> $10k, since they define the certification process.

Yeah. And it's certainly a strange way to put it: "if you can make money on
BB, we'll give you more money"... ?

~~~
rrreese
Reading between the lines it sounds like they are saying: "If you are a
serious developer who can make a quality app for BB, then here is a low risk
way of testing the market".

------
markus2012
With earlier versions of the emulator the process was: 1\. edit/compile in the
awful RIM IDE 2\. __REBOOT THE EMULATOR__ / push new code to the device.

Rebooting the emulator and pushing the new code for a test took over a minute.

I couldn't take it. I dropped support for BB and never looked back.

Have they fixed this?

~~~
subspaceman
Yep. They now have 2 options basically: you can use 'Cascades' which is their
modified Qt framework (modified by The Astonishing Tribe who RIM bought -
awesome designers/developers) with the eclipse-based IDE, or you can write a
'webworks' app which uses web technologies (html5, js, css) and write it in
whatever editor you want. The emulators are fine, but I prefer to push
straight to a device

------
frozenball
I wouldn't recommend developing for Blackberry. They don't care about software
copyright. For example, my app has been copied and submitted to App World
illegally by some guy in Dubai. So far my DMCA requests have been promptly
ignored (and it's been over a year).

~~~
brohee
Aren't they in Canada, and thus, aren't you invoking the wrong law?

------
skizm
In the comments for the "python for iOS" link yesterday I saw BB lets you
write native python. Sounds kind of fun and easy to get started. I might give
this a go (although buying a BB might set me back more than I would like).

------
adrinavarro
Half of the RIM appworld is just useless crap, and that's on the BlackBerry
and the PlayBook. They should invest in developers — but in house. Come on,
there isn't a single beautiful and stable Twitter client for the PlayBook (and
the OS isn't, either). It's awkward to use a PlayBook.

Shameless plug: <http://adrian.re/why-suits-are-killing-rim> (I still believe
that if it's just the big guys writing checks instead of working towards a
change, money will never come back)

------
ajaimk
RIM still has $100M in the bank?

~~~
ahelwer
They have over a billion in the bank and are still profitable. People LOVE
stories about RIM going down the drain for whatever reason, so these stats are
conveniently not mentioned. I am not saying there are no problems, but really
this is one bandwagon that needs to sloooooow doooown.

~~~
huxley
They had another massive decline in quarterly revenue YoY (-42.7% from Q1 2012
which was itself -30% from Q1 2011) and then they announced a delay on the
BB10 phones until 2013, I'd say that bandwagon is right on this one.

