MANILA, Philippines — If you think paying $100 to submit your app to Apple’s App Store is a ripoff, then BlackBerry maker Research in Motion may have the solution for you.
In a bid to populate its upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, Canadian phone maker RIM has announced rewards for app developers who will port their Android apps or websites into the company’s new system, with compensation reaching to as much as $2000 (about P80,000).
In a fresh round of porting events the company is calling “Port-A-Thons,” local developers who have existing Android apps can receive the cash reward by participating in the 36-hour virtual porting marathon, starting from 1:00 am of January 19.
For every successful app approved into BlackBerry World — the platform’s version of the App Store or the Google Play Store — RIM will pay developers $100, with a limit of up to $2000 per vendor.
But it’s not only app developers who are eligible for the cash reward, as website owners or Facebook page administrators can convert their Web pages into a BlackBerry app using RIM’s own conversion tooland submit them for approval.
The last app Port-A-Thon, held on January 12 worldwide and featured a local event organized by the PinoyBBDev community of BlackBerry developers, garnered some 15,000 applications for RIM’s new operating system over the course of 36 hours.
A total of $500,000 is available for distribution through these events, the company said.
The Canadian phone maker is preparing to unveil BlackBerry 10, its newest mobile operating system, along with a number of new devices at an event towards the end of January.
RIM President and CEO Thorsten Heins, who visited the Philippines in October, said they are banking on BB 10 to snatch market share away from Apple and Samsung, two companies that currently lead the global smartphone market.
It is also considered the company’s last-ditch effort for a turnaround as consumers increasingly go for touchscreen phones and away from QWERTY-enabled phones the likes of BlackBerry’s offerings.
“Why did we do this? Why didn’t we go Android or Windows 8 or any other open platform that’s out there? Because we want to serve our BlackBerry users and customers. And the way to do this is to keep our BlackBerry DNA alive, we need a new platform,” Heins said in an earlier interview.
RIM’s Port-A-Thons are a means to encourage rapid adoption of the platform upon launch as the availability of apps are now a major factor being considered by users in choosing their phones — something that the relatively young Windows Phone platform is currently struggling with, as its hundred-thousand-strong app base is easily dwarfed by iOS’s and Android’s apps that number by the millions.
Early adoption of the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 devices by government and corporate clients will help breathe new life into the struggling company, whose shares are down 90 percent from an all-time high of more than $148 in 2008.
Still, shares of RIM, which fell as low as $6.22 in September, have more than doubled in value over the last four months as the BlackBerry 10 launch approaches.
RIM promises that its new line of devices will be faster and smoother than existing BlackBerry phones and will boast a large catalog of apps, crucial to the success of any new line of smartphones.
source: interaksyon.com
