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by rrreese 5088 days ago
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.
3 comments
masklinn 5088 days ago
> 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"... ?

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rrreese 5088 days ago
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".
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huxley 5088 days ago
Seems like an odd sort of incentive to me.

There is about 18 months worth of risk to the developer to invest on an unproven platform with a phone maker that has seen a dramatic decline in fortunes.

No phones will be released until 2013, so you have that lead time during which there won't be any purchases, then the app has to be on the BB10 market for at least a year.

The developer has to develop or port the app, certify it with RIMM, keep it on the market for a year, hope there are enough phone buyers to make at least $1000 in sales, and then, assuming RIMM hasn't gone under, they will get a top off payment up to $10K.

For me that would be a lot of work and risk for $10K.

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cpuspin 5088 days ago
It's sounds like RIM will be giving developers the runaround (it's a half-baked idea anyway).

RIM continue to be in a tailspin.

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