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How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers

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Re: How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers

#11
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.

Re: How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers

#12
post #10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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!

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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