20,000 new BlackBerry App Generator apps in 36 hours
Last weekend, from midday Friday 18 Jan EST to midnight Saturday 19 Jan EST (36 hours in total) BlackBerry ran a last chance port-a-thon challenge, encouraging developers and content owners globally to build and submit an app for BlackBerry 10.
BlackBerry App Generator apps were a key part of the event, and the enthusiasm was overwhelming!
Across the 36 hours, we saw over 5,000 BlackBerry 10 apps built on the App Generator.
And what’s more, for each app they automatically built a separate binary for BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry OS5/6, OS7 and PlayBook… a total of over 20,000 unique app binaries.
That’s one app every 7 seconds, for 36 hours!
Technically, that means that every 7 seconds the App Generator was invoking one of their cloud-based SDKs, compiling an app, signing the app using the BlackBerry signing server and automatically generating screenshots for BlackBerry World.
Every 7 seconds. Amazing!
The app numbers won’t be close to Android and iOS, but will be more than any other new OS at launch. I think the huge push by RIM to get developers on board, and maybe more importantly, making that one of the key storylines in the leadup to BB10′s launch, will help to minimize that criticism.
No matter how many apps are in the store on launch day it won;t be enough as it won’t be near enough the amount for iPhone and android. No doubt the press will jump all over that anyway.
Hopefully, we will have the major apps and that should be good enough. At the end of the day, who installs a thousand apps on their mobile?
I don’t know how many good apps there are, 5,000, 10,000? Unfortunately I think RIM has to play on the field that has been established. The number of apps that a system has is now established in the minds of the media and many consumers as an indicator of developer interest and buy in. RIMM has to be in the same ballpark as the others to avoid the app-gap stigma. Otherwise, the headline of most stories about BB10 will be about how it’s a great OS, but has 10 times less apps. Hopefully the app reviews and sorting will help us weed through the crap apps quickly.
Too many ports are coming across and it’s not good.
If I wanted android apps, I would buy an android.
I think the check the apps for running ok on bb10 but not sure if they actually check every item for quality. That would take too long considering the amount of apps that have been submitted for porting.
They do, Don’t worry
That’s not good. Quantity over quality seems to be the strategy now.
Although I am happy to hear about the recent surge of BB apps being created, I am a little bit worried about the quality of those apps.
Does RIM do a quality check before the apps get approved in the Port-A-Thon events?