Oh, RIM. Pity the once-might conquerors of the corporate smartphone world, for they have been reduced to petty sniping while trying to emulate that which they hate. In its latest fit of corporate chest-thumping, the BlackBerry manufacturer has shouted to its European developer conference that apps on the BlackBerry App World are more profitable than their Android counterparts. Citing some numbers from their own analytics (which, to be fair, we’ve got no basis for disputing) CEO Thorsten Heins and other executives claimed that BBAW apps earn 40% more than Android apps, and that 13% of BlackBerry developers have made more than $100,000 dollars. By Android Community’s incredibly unofficial estimates, that’s approximately 13 people.

For a little perspective, remember that Thorsten Heins is the same man who claimed that “All Android phones are the same“, probably while carrying a RIM BlackBerry [generic title] [four-digit number] in his pocket. A week later RIM started literally giving away PlayBooks to any Android developer who ported their apps to the floundering tablet platform, using RIM’s supplied tools to bootstrap and Android environment onto their proprietary software. It might have something to do with the fact that BlackBerry App World has only 60,ooo apps as opposed to Android’s 300,000+, and a tiny fraction of those are made for the PlayBook. RIM claims 6 million app downloads every day. Since we know that at least one billion apps were downloaded from the Android Market in a six-week period from December to January, we can estimate that around 23 million apps are being downloaded from the Market every day.

But fear not, gentle reader: RIM will not go quietly into that good night. They’ve committed to remaining true to their own software and platform, and are in no way, shape or form considering switching to Android. Despite building a tablet that seems tailor-made for running Android apps, and doing a little too much protesting. No RIM, keep BlackBerry on your antiquated hardware and rapidly declining software instead of bringing your business acumen to a vibrant new platform – it’s worked so well for the likes of Palm and Nokia, after all.

[via The Verge]

4 COMMENTS

  1. Well, it’s true. I have a game  that I sell on iOS, Android and Blackberry. Overall AppWorld is the most profitable, I get twice as much as on AppStore and 3 times as on Marketplace.

  2. I never would have touched a RIM device with a long stick. I got a Playbook as a birthday present, and it’s incredible. It utterly blows the iPad & iPod touch away. I’ve used every major tablet on the market, and the Playbook is among the best of them. The Asus MeMo 370T will give it some serious competition, but that won’t be available for a while yet.

    It may not succeed as a platform, but if it doesn’t, it’ll be because of wrongheaded, misinformed media attention, like this article. The Playbook is a fantastic device with a fantastic OS. RIM never should have put the word “Blackberry” on it.

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