“Research In Motion‘s (RIMM) BlackBerry World Conference continues for its second day today, and the company is promising $10,000 to developers,” Teresa Rivas reports for Barron’s.
“The company has been giving away prototypes to juice app development for the new phone, as many prefer to create software for Apple‘s (AAPL) and Google‘s (GOOG) Android products,” Rivas reports. “Now, it is directly addressing the concern that it doesn’t have the market share to be profitable to developers, guaranteeing that any approved apps submitted to its App World store before the launch of the new BlackBerry 10 will earn at least $10,000 in their first year.”
Rivas reports, “Still, analysts have been largely skeptical of the company’s prospects since the start of the conference. Out this morning is a note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek: ‘The BB10 alpha handsets look rough despite being only ~5 months from launch, offer little differentiation, and the focus on BB10 will collapse BB7 sales for the next two Qs… Preliminary views of the handsets and comments from RIM indicate that the hardware is “pokey,” battery life is poor, and the software is rough/ incomplete. RIM has stated that the launch version will be improved, but there are only ~5 months left and competitors have spent years refining their OSs after their initial launches. BB10 presentation demos show a UI that resembles a combination of Windows tiles and Web OS.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bribing ribbon makers to keep producing cartridges isn’t going to save the typewriter business.
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Apple takes lion’s share of mobile profits; Samsung unit sales estimates cloud market share picture – May 1, 2012
Beleaguered RIM confirms responsibility for ‘Wake Up’ mock protest at Apple Store Sydney – May 1, 2012
Beleaguered RIM said to discuss hiring bank to weigh strategy options – April 16, 2012
Develop for Blackberry? Why bother?
I just don’t understand who they think they are kidding? Nobody, devs, analysts, users, shareholders….seems to grasp that you can’t release unfinished stuff into today’s savvy market. WTF
How come they’ve cornered the entire market of dumb?
Cause they have the #1 Dumb-phone; which will cement their place in the market. My prediction is that RIM will travel all the way to the bottom with incredible speed! 🙂
Great MDN take …
1
By the way, where can you buy typewriter ribbon. I’m beginning to run a bit low and need to do some market analysis and release a believable report!
Public illusions — Private sale talks
The desperation reminds me of Palm when they were positioning themselves for takeover bait. Wait what?
Oh, good. $10k for a flashlight app.
Nice!
RIM or RIP?
Flashlight and Fart apps, here I come.
Wow, does RIM even have enough cash to subsidize app development by $10k per app? 100,000 apps could mean $1B in potential subsidy.
MSFT probably doing the same thing -more subtlely. But they have cash to burn.
I’d wait for then check to clear before writing one line of code…
Make it $100k and I’ll write an abacus app for blackberry 10. Then the CEO can sack the CFO and calculate RIM’s losses himself!!
This is a great idea. Port 100 nonsense apps to rim and make $1 million.
Who thinks RIM will be around in a year to pay out those promises?
Facebook buy RIM now. 🙂
Yes, but when you have a BlackBerry, everyone KNOWS you mean business!
Oh . . . okay . . . couldn’t type that with a straight face . . . picking myself off the floor now . . .
On top of the above problems the Blackberry faithful are in an uproar because the 10 doesn’t have a physical keyboard.