RIM: Unmistakable smell of death
Developers, developers, developers are what you need to succeed and the one-time market leader is losing the battle for these all important hearts and minds. Thereupon, three top names in the mobile app development space are taking their skills elsewhere.
Bloomberg reports that Seesmic, Mobile Roadie and Purple Forge have all decided to stop making Blackberry versions of their apps. I guess we don’t need to ask about their intentions vis-a-vis RIM’s Playbook.
“You have to put your resources where the growth is,” said Seesmic Chief Executive Officer Loic Le Meur. “It’s coming down to the explosive growth of the iPhone and the Android operating systems.”
The Blackberry’s share of global sales, according to researcher Gartner, fell to 12.9 percent in the first quarter from 19.7 percent a year earlier, as Apple gained and Android more than tripled to 36 percent. That said, RIM’s smartphone app library totals just 35,000 apps compared to 425,000 iPhone and 200,000 Android apps.
More effort for fewer sales
Bloomberg writes that developers are leaving Blackberry because it’s more difficult and expensive to write for the platform. Further, falling sales and market share aren’t helping RIM’s cause either.
“When we put an application in the field, there was a 20- to-1 difference between Apple and BlackBerry downloads,” said Purple Forge’s Hurley. “What Apple scored big on is having a touch screen and a button and that’s it.
“In deploying Apple applications, there are very few surprises,” said Hurley. “In Android, there are increasingly more surprises. But in BlackBerry, there are immediately lots of gotchas across the board.”
Who wants to develop for, let along own, a Blackberry now?
via Cult of Mac
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June 27th, 2011
It was always going to happen – the iPhone has become the defacto standard in smartphones.