

How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers - netcrash
http://www.im-possible.com/2011/07/how-rim-blackberry-works-with-loyal-app.html

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meatmanek
An app is stuck in approval purgatory, and a customer service rep rattles off
a canned response about why there aren't any IM apps on the Playbook yet.

That's a long way from solid evidence of anti-competitive behavior. These guys
have a right to be upset, since it's been two months since they first
submitted, but they should remember Hanlon's razor when trying to explain
things.

Rather than trying to cover things up, chances are that the customer service
rep honestly has no idea about the IM+ app submission. It's probably not his
department.

Likewise, rather than RIM deliberately trying to block IM+, the two month
delay is probably due to lack of staff, bad prioritization of tasks, or things
otherwise falling through the cracks,

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divtxt
I'd say it's intentional due to Hanlon's razor in upper management.

Perhaps some logic like this: we can't lose "our" BBM users but blocking IM
apps would drive users and developers away. Let's quietly block IM apps at the
approval stage!

Also, "anti-competitive" is the wrong description - unless you count killing
your own company. :D

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akc
I can corroborate with the author's story. I'm developing the BB app for a
cross-platform group messaging app and I've also hit a wall of silence from
RIM. I can confirm that they are deliberately not giving us access to certain
parts of RIM's infrastructure that would make things a lot easier for us. Oh
well, guess we'll have to engineer our way around those roadblocks and then
open source it!

~~~
divtxt
I'd love to hear your history, reasons and current attitude to developing BB
apps.

The stories* tell me that the RIM/BB developer experience is so much worse
than iOS and Android that it's not worth bothering with (as developers and
hence as a viable platform).

* the big ones: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2263882> ("You Win, RIM!") and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714270> ("Open letter to BlackBerry bosses")

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jrodgers
You can't really blame RIM for being slow on IM apps given they are suing Kik
with one patent claim around IM on mobile devices (I wonder if they will sue
Apple with iMessage). Most other IM apps on BB were on there before the
lawsuit and you have to bet no one at RIM wants to come down on the wrong side
of the legal department.

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Silhouette
I think the whole platform-specific app development issue is going to cause
increasing headaches for the mobile platform developers over the next year or
two. All these rigid policies and semi-arbitrary and unaccountable decisions
to reject apps and locked up technical details just make it hard for serious
businesses to justify committing the resources required to write native apps
worth more than an iFart toy.

Maybe some will and they'll get away with it, just as right now Zynga are
doing pretty well even though they're almost completely dependent on Facebook,
but the average app developer doesn't have the highly valuable and almost
symbiotic relationship that evolved in that case. Meanwhile, much of what apps
do could also be done almost as well using web-based software, which can run
quite happily on any modern mobile, can be developed at a fraction of the cost
of targeting each platform with a native app, and doesn't carry any risk of
lock-in or summary execution by random platform developer/app store employee.

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melvinng
We are about to do a test run of our loyalty application RewardCard.mobi, and
it will only support iPhone and Androids. (Oh the test is at the RIM plaza)

