While RIM’s recent woes have been well-chronicled in the media, Alec Saunders, the company’s vice president of developer relations, says that developers are still coming up to him and showing him BlackBerry 10 (BB10) apps they’re working on. “I have people saying, ‘Nobody treats us like RIM does,'” he added. “The consistent thing I hear is, ‘I had no idea how easy it was to build on BB10.'”
RIM has two key benefits to offer coders: ease of development and an un-crowded app store. Mobile developer Rob Drimmie noted, “One of the things I love about what RIM is doing lately is the way they’ve embraced open source technologies. I think the way they support tools like PhoneGap, the Ripple Emulator, and so many other important web community projects that explicitly promote cross-platform development is brilliant.”
And while BlackBerry Apps World has far fewer apps than Apple’s App Store or Google Play, Saunders says that’s actually a plus for developers. “The store isn’t overcrowded,” said Saunders. “The fact is that if you develop on the BlackBerry, as a developer you can actually make money.”
