BloombergNEW YORK | TORONTO: Research In Motion (RIM), struggling to compete in the smartphone market with Apple and Google, is losing support among some software developers who have been making programs for the company’s BlackBerry. Seesmic, a developer of socialmedia applications, and Mobile Roadie, which makes apps for fans of the Miami Dolphins and country singer Taylor Swift, have decided to stop making products for RIM.
Purple Forge, which makes programmes for political campaigns and polling, will stop building BlackBerry versions of its apps unless customers request it. “You have to put your resources where the growth is,” Seesmic, chief executive officer Loic Le Meur, said in an interview .
The Waterloo, Ontariobased company’s share of global smartphone sales fell to 12.9% in the first quarter from 19.7% a year earlier, as Apple gained and Android more than tripled to 36%, according to researcher Gartner. RIM said it continues to increase the number of programs for customers.
There are more than 35,000 apps in the company’s online store, up from the more than 25,000 in March, said Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman . There are more than 2,00,000 apps in the Android Market and more than 4,25,000 in Apple’s App Store. The developers are stepping back from BlackBerry because they say creating apps is too complex and costly for the size of the market.
RIM’s devices have different screens sizes, varied operating systems and several ways to navigate, from a physical keyboard to touchscreen to a scroll button. “As soon as RIM brought in a touchscreen and mixed it with a thumbwheel, a keyboard and shortcut keys, it made it really difficult and expensive to develop across devices ,” said Purple Forge CEO Brian Hurley.
“What Apple scored big on is having a touch screen and a button and that’s it.” There are also costly surprises that turn up during development for RIM, Hurley said in an interview . “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.” When Seesmic’s Le Meur tried to load his San Francisco-based company’s application on the new BlackBerry Playbook tablet , the application wouldn’t run, he said. “To me it was like, ‘Whoa.’ BlackBerry isn’t even an option,” Le Meur said.
For Mobile Roadie, which allows its customers to design and build their own applications , the variation across devices was particularly frustrating . In an interview, CEO Michael Schneider said users would blame the Beverly Hillsbased company for inconveniences like distorted images on different-sized screens.
“At the end of the day, I even felt that developing for BlackBerry could be hurting our reputation ,” Schneider said. The decision to back away from Black-Berry was made easier by waning user engagement, developers said. “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.
Purple Forge, which makes programmes for political campaigns and polling, will stop building BlackBerry versions of its apps unless customers request it. “You have to put your resources where the growth is,” Seesmic, chief executive officer Loic Le Meur, said in an interview .
“It’s coming down to the explosive growth of the iPhone and the Android operating systems .” RIM has been trying to build support among developers to fight back against Apple and Google’s Android, which have drawn away users with greater varieties of applications. RIM last week said quarterly revenue may drop for the first time in nine years and unveiled plans to cut jobs.
The Waterloo, Ontariobased company’s share of global smartphone sales fell to 12.9% in the first quarter from 19.7% a year earlier, as Apple gained and Android more than tripled to 36%, according to researcher Gartner. RIM said it continues to increase the number of programs for customers.
There are more than 35,000 apps in the company’s online store, up from the more than 25,000 in March, said Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman . There are more than 2,00,000 apps in the Android Market and more than 4,25,000 in Apple’s App Store. The developers are stepping back from BlackBerry because they say creating apps is too complex and costly for the size of the market.
RIM’s devices have different screens sizes, varied operating systems and several ways to navigate, from a physical keyboard to touchscreen to a scroll button. “As soon as RIM brought in a touchscreen and mixed it with a thumbwheel, a keyboard and shortcut keys, it made it really difficult and expensive to develop across devices ,” said Purple Forge CEO Brian Hurley.
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“What Apple scored big on is having a touch screen and a button and that’s it.” There are also costly surprises that turn up during development for RIM, Hurley said in an interview . “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.” When Seesmic’s Le Meur tried to load his San Francisco-based company’s application on the new BlackBerry Playbook tablet , the application wouldn’t run, he said. “To me it was like, ‘Whoa.’ BlackBerry isn’t even an option,” Le Meur said.
For Mobile Roadie, which allows its customers to design and build their own applications , the variation across devices was particularly frustrating . In an interview, CEO Michael Schneider said users would blame the Beverly Hillsbased company for inconveniences like distorted images on different-sized screens.
“At the end of the day, I even felt that developing for BlackBerry could be hurting our reputation ,” Schneider said. The decision to back away from Black-Berry was made easier by waning user engagement, developers said. “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.
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