Opportunities for BlackBerry developers: an exclusive interview with RIM

Representatives of RIM, Andrey Kiselyov and Ola Larsen spoke at the MobileFest conference, which was held in September near St. Petersburg. They talked about the capabilities of devices on the BlackBerry® platform – in particular, they presented a new PlayBook tablet and even played it among the conference participants. 

We asked Andrey to answer a few questions that may be of interest to developers for mobile platforms.

Where can I sell applications for BlackBerry®?We have our own store, which is called BlackBerry®

App World – a new version of it has just been released. It is pre-installed on every RIM device, including tablets. In the BlackBerry® online store App World presents applications for all BlackBerry smartphones that have a trackball, trackpad or touch screen and are running BlackBerry OS 4.5 and higher operating systems.

Blackberry owners have the opportunity to download applications from BlackBerry App World by accessing the website from their smartphone www.blackberry.com/appworld or mobile.blackberry.com. It is there that developers should add their applications, which can be distributed on a paid or free basis in the future. The store takes 30% of the sales.

Detailed instructions for developing applications for App World can be found here: developer.blackberry.com .

How can developers “withdraw” the earned money?So far, only via PayPal, which may be somewhat problematic for Russian developers (PayPal has not started supporting payments to Russia).

But we expect that the situation will change, and in parallel we are working on this issue ourselves.

In the Apple App Store, it is almost impossible to get an app feature, you can’t buy ads – how are things with this on App World?Any new application for the first time turns in the “New” section – it gets there automatically.

And how many applications for BlackBerry® are there now?More than 50 thousand.

On average, BlackBerry® smartphone users download more than 3 million BlackBerry® apps daily App World.

Do I need to get the app approved before publishing it?Yes, but, as a rule, this is a quick process: the developer must be registered in the App World, and the main requirement for the application is that it works.

Therefore, there is a minimal check for bugs – everything is adequate, without “draconian” measures.

Are there any developer support programs?We have a 4-level BlackBerry Alliance support program.

The first level is free registration, which makes it possible to place applications on App World. The next levels assume an annual membership fee of $1,000 to $3,000 per year and include support from RIM via email, development assistance, as well as receiving all new BlackBerry devices for free. Detailed information can be found on the website Blackberryalliance.com

Are you interested in content from Russian developers?Yes, we have now started actively working with Russia, there are already several successful examples.

We will be glad if the number of applications in Russian will increase!