How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers

An app is stuck in approval purgatory, and a customer service rep rattles off a canned response about why there aren't any IM apps on the Playbook yet.<p>That's a long way from solid evidence of anti-competitive behavior. These guys have a right to be upset, since it's been two months since they first submitted, but they should remember Hanlon's razor when trying to explain things.<p>Rather than trying to cover things up, chances are that the customer service rep honestly has no idea about the IM+ app submission. It's probably not his department.<p>Likewise, rather than RIM deliberately trying to block IM+, the two month delay is probably due to lack of staff, bad prioritization of tasks, or things otherwise falling through the cracks,

You can't really blame RIM for being slow on IM apps given they are suing Kik with one patent claim around IM on mobile devices (I wonder if they will sue Apple with iMessage). Most other IM apps on BB were on there before the lawsuit and you have to bet no one at RIM wants to come down on the wrong side of the legal department.

I think the whole platform-specific app development issue is going to cause increasing headaches for the mobile platform developers over the next year or two. All these rigid policies and semi-arbitrary and unaccountable decisions to reject apps and locked up technical details just make it hard for serious businesses to justify committing the resources required to write native apps worth more than an iFart toy.<p>Maybe some will and they'll get away with it, just as right now Zynga are doing pretty well even though they're almost completely dependent on Facebook, but the average app developer doesn't have the highly valuable and almost symbiotic relationship that evolved in that case. Meanwhile, much of what apps do could also be done almost as well using web-based software, which can run quite happily on any modern mobile, can be developed at a fraction of the cost of targeting each platform with a native app, and doesn't carry any risk of lock-in or summary execution by random platform developer/app store employee.

We are about to do a test run of our loyalty application RewardCard.mobi, and it will only support iPhone and Androids. (Oh the test is at the RIM plaza)