15000 apps are available for RIM’s latest operating system, BlackBerry 10, which they hope will reverse their fortunes in the smartphone wars. They held an event inviting developers to port over their smartphone apps to Blackberry 10, with a reward of $100 for every app accepted into the BlackBerry App World store.
However, this lead to some people taking advantage, pirating Google Play applications and then porting them to BlackBerry 10 for the cash reward. Some Android developers have expressed surprise at receiving emails from users of their non-existent BlackBerry versions! Those pirated apps discovered have now been removed.
Despite these problems, RIM is pushing hard with BlackBerry 10 and it’s new range of applications, which show a serious and radical attempt at shaking up their OS. This week we’ve seen a complete redesign of BlackBerry Desktop, now called BlackBerry Link.
There’s also a new version of BlackBerry Messenger on the way, with integrated video calls.
Launches rarely go without a hitch (hello iOS 6 and Windows 8!), so a few headaches should be expected. We’ll see what happens when BlackBerry 10 is released on January 30.
Will BlackBerry 10 signal the return of BlackBerry? It looks difficult to beat iOS and Android now, but both of those took on entrenched competition and won, so we shouldn’t write off RIM’s chances yet.
