In its formal announcement regarding BlackBerry 10, Research
In Motion (NASDAQ:
RIMM
) published a
list of quotes
from developers that were intrigued by the platform. Dennis
Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare, said that his company
is "extremely excited" to be part of BB10's launch. Bob Rosin, VP
& GM of Business Development for Microsoft's (NASDAQ:
MSFT
) Skype division, is also excited.
Petri Järvilehto, an EVP at Rovio, said that his firm is
"delighted" to bring Angry Birds to such a "great platform."
Cisco's (NASDAQ:
CSCO
) Raj Gossain is "proud to extend Cisco's WebEx technology to the
BlackBerry 10 platform."
These are the official comments that were approved by
BlackBerry (NASDAQ:
BBRY
) for publication within the firm's press release. What do other
developers think of BlackBerry 10?
"They're happy to have another platform to develop for," Jan
Dawson, Ovum's Chief Telecoms Analyst, told Benzinga. "It's a
good installed base that they should be able to sell into, so
there will be some demand for the apps. That will be something
that developers will be excited about."
"Overall, the functionality works great," Tim Richard,
co-founder of Weever Apps, told
CBC
. "It takes a couple of minutes to adjust, but I think Android
and iPhone type touch screen users would find it easier to
adjust."
"I think the BB10 will have a tough fight ahead to win back
their market share. It is not always the best technology that
wins out," Daniel Jeppsson, founder of Funkoi Games, told
FierceDeveloper
. "That said, I think there is a significant,
entertainment-hungry, fun crowd of people that developers can
cater to on the BlackBerry platform."
"I'll be honest, it (BlackBerry) is my third choice," Andrew
Kamondy, founder of Toronto-based app developer 99cents, told
FierceDeveloper. "But it could be my first choice depending on
the app and the opportunity."
FierceDeveloper also interviewed Harvey Elliot, the COO of
Marmalade, who said that he liked BlackBerry's distinction
between apps and developers.
"They're not targeting apps, they're saying, 'We want
developers,'" he said. "That's an important distinction. And
they're not just using a single channel. They've been hosting
webinars, there have been port-a-thons. They're really spreading
their communication options."
This may only be a small sampling of the thousands of
developers that are working on BlackBerry 10 apps, but the
general response seems to be positive (if not a little
cautious).
"They're gonna have a base of developers, probably mostly
people that developed for BlackBerry before," Dawson added.
"Beyond that I think they're gonna struggle to attract new
developers until they prove that there's a big base of users
there. Developers don't want to [build apps] that are only going
to be used by a few people. They want to develop for platforms
that have a lot of users [and] ideally make a lot of money
selling the apps. It is not clear that BlackBerry 10 is the
platform that fits those criteria right now."
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@LouisBedigianBZ
(c) 2013 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment
advice. All rights reserved.
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