RIM's Developer-Push For BB10

The BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. has been in news lately for all the wrong reasons - be it the delay of the launch of its flagship operating system [OS10], mounting financial losses or slashing of thousands of jobs worldwide. The emergence of the BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] trend, and the growing popularity of Android devices and Apple Inc. have further challenged the dominance of RIM in its own niche space. Experts feel that these events could indicate a beginning of the end of the BlackBerry era. (See Sunil Lalvani: Director - Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, , and .)

But, the company has tightened its belt to defy the naysayers and this time, it is focusing on strengthening its developer ecosystem to provide a stepping stone for BlackBerry 10 phones.

"We are investing close to US$100 million (INR 5,542 million) worldwide to boost our developer ecosystem. Our priority is to ensure a strong support system for our developer communities around the world," says Alec Saunders, Vice President, Developer Relations at RIM.

Realizing the growth potential, RIM has pinned its hopes on developing markets like India and is working closely with local developers to understand the market dynamics. There is also an aggressive push to expand its BASE (BlackBerry Apps by Student Entrepreneurs) program in the country to increase its local developer base.

For starters, BlackBerry started the BASE program in 2012 which gives an opportunity to engineering students from selected colleges to develop applications for the company. The first BASE (2012) is targeted at third and fourth-year engineering students in Tamil Nadu.

RIM's efforts to encourage the developer community is quite understandable. Once a preferred smartphone choice for enterprises, RIM lost the early advantage because of its ill-planned arrival in the mobile apps ecosystem and wireless broadband. Even today, it is nowhere close to its competitors. According to Distimo, Apple has over 500,000 applications for its iOS, Android has around 400,000, while RIM has only 80,000.

Following a disappointing performance in the first quarter of the fiscal 2013 where it posted a 43-percent dip in profits [$2.8 billion] compared to [$4.9 billion] the same quarter last year, it's a now-or-never situation for the company. In Indian enterprises, RIM claims that BlackBerry is still the preferred platform choice for 80 percent of the CIOs, which is down from 100 percent a few years back. It is hoping that the increased focus on building new applications will give a boost to its market share.

"While developing an application ecosystem is certainly an effort in the right direction, you need to understand that India is a very different market and RIM also needs to introduce products which should appeal to local customers. Globally, they are betting big on BlackBerry10 phones for which they will be competing with iPhone 5," says Rahul Gupta, Senior Manager - Emerging Markets, Strategy Analytics Inc.

Jatinder Singh, Principal Correspondent, Light Reading India