I was involved in a Blackberry portathon. They were offering USD 100 for each of the approved apps submitted at that time. This incentive surely didn't help. I remember participants there, raising concerns about 20-30 different apps by same user converting one currency to another. But it seems BB wanted quantity so badly that they are ready to compromise on the quality side. Infact they were actively promoting a 3rd party tool Blackberry app generator (or something similar). Which was just a app generator packaging single RSS feed as an app.
As a BlackBerry 10 developer, this is pretty bad. It pollutes the store with garbage apps like the Play Store. The difference with the Play Store is that there are enough good apps there that they rise above the noise. It seems like BlackBerry needs to work on getting more significant apps on the platform, and needs to work on filtering out crap like this.<p>I'm making what I consider to be "good" apps, but I'm just one dev. It's a really crappy problem of the fact that phones aren't selling due to lack of apps, which doesn't incentivize developers to create apps because there aren't many customers.<p>It's really an unfortunate problem to have that I don't have a good solution for them to get out of. It's a fantastic development platform, and a fantastic OS that really blows Android, Windows Phone, and even iOS out of the water in many ways.<p>I'm more excited for BlackBerry's future than ever, but I'm also more worried than ever. <i>sigh</i>
According to discussions I've been reading about this [1], it seems that more than _half_ of the applications on BB App World come from just four developers: a staggering 67,500 apps.<p>[1] <a href="http://forums.crackberry.com/news-rumors-f40/one-app-developer-responsible-47-000-apps-blackberry-world-841408/index3.html#post9045550" rel="nofollow">http://forums.crackberry.com/news-rumors-f40/one-app-develop...</a>
Could it be that maybe there's some kind of quirk in the BB API that turns out to be conducive to developing BlackBerry apps in a declaritive fashion?<p>So like, what if you dump a bunch of API calls into a table, and then aggregate the varying permutations with a SQL query, and wrap it all up in appropriate XML markup, programatically, and the call each variant an "app"?<p>The reason I'm pondering this, is because I think Microsoft has a similar situation, where even something as trivial as an RSS feed might be counted among the "app" statistics:<p><a href="http://www.itworld.com/software/369727/microsoft-updates-windows-phone-app-studio-after-developer-projects-soar" rel="nofollow">http://www.itworld.com/software/369727/microsoft-updates-win...</a><p>...and then there's also Firefox OS to consider. Where do you draw the line between an "app" and somebody's crappy web page?
BlackBerry needs to seriously weed out the rubbish. Besides the fact that browsing App World is a nasty experience on my 9930 (sorting is the most awkward I've ever seen), finding something I'm actually looking for is nearly impossible. I always end up browsing on my laptop and then scanning the QR code to install.<p>It's not style, not the call quality or even battery life that really can make or break BB. It's the available applications. If they can't get rid of the hackish nonsense, not to mention the equally unhelpful "reviews", nothing will change.<p>I know BB is rushing to fill this gap, but quantity over quality will tarnish the brand and make App World a joke. It looks like it's already done a lot of damage.
Windows Phone has (had? Haven't used a while) the same problem. There are tons of the same apps which are basically just wrappers for the mobile version of a website (facebook, youtube etc.) in the marketplace.
I wonder if he/she pulls in significant revenue. How else would they be motivated to create 47,000 apps? Perhaps there are lesser app juggernauts on the Google Play and App Store as well.