Are
you ready to jam?
Alec Saunders, Vice Presidents, Developer Relations &
Ecosystem Development, Research In Motion, then took over the stage and talked
about a new developers’ program.
Alec Saunders, Vice Presidents, Developer
Relations & Ecosystem Development, RIM
At first, he talked about musicians and developers, the
similarity between two sides of these extremely different occupations. He then
went on to announce BlackBerry Jam, a new developers’ program that is designed
to be help developers work, innovate, create applications, connect RIM to the
developers for broader opportunities, to help developers create businesses and
much more. BlackBerry Jam consists of three things, namely the BlackBerry Jam
Sessions, BlackBerry Jam Communities and the BlackBerry Jam Zone. There is also
a BlackBerry Jam recognition program called the BlackBerry Jammies (as in
Grammy’s, get it?).
Alec Saunders announcing BlackBerry Jam, a
new developer program for BlackBerry developers
BlackBerry Jam Zone is where developers can get the
tools, resources and information to develop, test and distribute for the
BlackBerry Application Platform. This is also the place where BlackBerry
developers ‘hang out’. RIM has made it easier for those who wish to develop for
the BlackBerry platform by removing fees, credit card check, reducing
turnaround time by 95% and much more. Alec then went on to demonstrate the new
BlackBerry Developers’ website, where they added a bunch of microsites to help
developers get started and getting stuff done. There are no registration forms
and no need to verify anything at all. Just click and download the SDK and
developers can build right away.
Alec Saunders introducing BlackBerry Jam
Recognition Program, also called the Jammies
Next up is the BlackBerry Jam Community. The idea is to
enable developers to connect to RIM’s eco-system to get expert advice, sample
codes, and even to look for an opportunity to ‘jam’ with other developers
within the community.
There are two new BlackBerry Jam Community programs,
namely the BlackBerry Open Source Initiative, and BlackBerry Jam Sessions. RIM
has added plenty of open source platforms to the BlackBerry Open Source
Initiative to aid developers in developing applications rapidly.
The BlackBerry Jam Sessions are events where BlackBerry
developers can exchange ideas and define and build the next generation of app
experiences. One such session is the BBM Apps Hackaton. RIM will be planning a
lot more Jam Sessions in the future, based on the feedback from BBM Apps
Hackaton.
Alec then announced the winners of the BlackBerry Jam
Community Developer Challenge, where Synqua Games’ Cricket with Friends won the
‘Most Addictive Social App’ using the BBM Social Platform, Love Indonesia’s
Love Indonesia for BlackBerry won the ‘Best Adobe Flash/Air App and Quintell
Business Inteliligence Pte Ltd’s Shogomo won the ‘Most Innovative BlackBerry
WebWorks’ app on the BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 6.
Marketing
Apps
‘Not every musician wants to be a starving artiste and
not every developer wants to build just free application,’ said Alec when he
introduced the BlackBerry Jam Market. BlackBerry Jam Market is a whole series
of program, technology and services that are designed to help developers go out
to the market and profit with the BlackBerry applications. RIM also provided a
series of cloud services, namely Ad Service 2.0, Payment Service 1.5 and
Scoreloop Social Gaming Service, that lets developers build more profit with
their applications.
Alec then talked a bit about BlackBerry App World, where
he busted some of the myths surrounding App World. First up, he announced App
World 3.1 (available for update at the time of writing) that supports default
carrier billing, Request a Gift feature, Wi-Fi support, content industry rating
and filtering and a New Channel.
Alec Saunders announcing the new App World
3.1
Mythbusting!
He then went onto a ‘Mythbuster’ mode and busted some of
the most common myth about the App World. The first is the myth ‘The BlackBerry
market is shrinking’. He explained that with 70 million active BlackBerry subscribers,
up from 50 million last year, the BlackBerry market is far from shrinking.
The second myth is ‘BlackBerry users don’t use apps’. He
answered this by explaining that Indonesian BlackBerry users download twice as
many apps as the average mobile users. The third myth was ‘BlackBerry
developers can’t make money’. Alec busted this by saying the App World has more
paid downloads than Android Market and is the second most profitable app store
after Apple. It generates 40% more revenue than Android Market apps and 13% of
BlackBerry developers have made USD 100,000 or more from the App World.
He also debunked the saying that ‘BlackBerry is just for
business’ by giving an example that 6 in 10 users in Thailand use their devices
for personal users, and ditto for the 7 in 10 people in Indonesia. He explained
further that the top 5 downloaded apps on the App World are Social networking
apps, which are usually not associated with business.
Alec Saunders debunking some of the myths
surrounding BlackBerry
Application
Demonstration
Chris Smith, Vice President, Application Platform and
Tools at Research In Motion came on stage after Alec and invited a few BlackBerry
application developers to demonstrate their applications.
A developer showing how easy it is to build a
BlackBerry application
One application that caught our attention was developed
using the BlackBerry Cascade framework. It was presented by Anders Larsson, a
Product Manager in RIM, and boy was it good. The application runs on the
PlayBook and it is a little like a social network app. Right after launching
the application, a bunch of thumbnails appear. These are not just ‘normal’
thumbnails but they are ‘live’. Thumbnails of videos were playing while it was
scrolling through the screen. The user can then tap on it to play the video in
full. After that, there is a Timeline feature, where it displays your contact’s
trending topics. The user can tap on some of the more popular topics at the
bottom and the app displays the frequency of these topics in a very vibrant
colour timeline.
The application for Playbook, built using
BlackBerry Cascades framework
Representatives from Wikitude also demonstrated their
applications on stage. Chris also demonstrated games for the PlayBook, and the
game Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus debuted in DevCon Asia.
In
a nutshell
BlackBerry DevCon Asia was a really interesting
conference. Developers will get the most out of it. It’s great to see RIM
managed to pull it off in less than 2 weeks notice and we hope that we’ll be
there when DevCon Asia goes back to Thailand. Thank you RIM for the invitation!
