recruiting

• RIM has released official images of their Blackberry application center, the Blackberry Storefront. RIM is yet another mobile manufacturer who thinks a standard platform that allows third-party developers in to sell applications is going to solve everything for the company. Palm has just released their plans of having a platform for third party developers, Android already has theirs (with paid apps coming soon), and several others are planned to be released this year.
• Research In Motion is looking to launch their store in the next 6 weeks, and it took a major step forward when it started accepting applications from app writers to be included in the launch. Blackberry has a few apps already, but have been widely disliked thus far. Apps like Facebook for the Blackberry aren’t nearly as intuitive and functional as they are on the iPhone.
• Some worry that because of the Blackberry lineup of phones, some developers will be turned off. The Storm’s ‘half-push, half-touch’ screen make it difficult to mimic games already popular for some developers on the iPhone who are interested in testing out another platform. Also, the Blackberry Curve and Bold both have standard non-touch QWERTY keyboards with scroll balls, another turnoff for potential developers not only for non-compatibility, but overall lack of intuitiveness. Apple is currently King of app developers and sales. They just passed the 500 million app download mark this past week. RIM will be succesfful if they can recruit 1/3 of the amount of developers using iPhone’s SDK. They are off to a decent start however, offering a special VC fund to help find developers and grow apps for its platform.
• Do you think other manufacturer’s can compete with Apple in the standard platform market? Does RIM stand a chance with their phone lineup? I think Android Market will be the only real competitor to Apple’s store and that RIM doesn’t stand a chance beyond the no-brainer apps you expect to see on their phones.

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