Is RIM’s App World your father’s Apple App Store?
By Michael W. Jones
The new App World from Research in Motion (RIM), the Blackberry people, is not a copy of the Apple App Store. In fact, there are some major style differences.
The most noticeable difference is the pricing structure. RIM has decided to use app pricing “tiers”, which range from $0.99 to $9.99. Free apps will also be listed. Unlike the Apple App Store, developers will have to pay a $200 fee when they submit their software for approval. If the submitted software is rejected, the fee will be returned.
These pricing arrangements almost guarantee that App World will offer less software, but more business-oriented software. The Blackberry phones, of course, have long been associated with business and professional people. The sort of pricing plan being proposed also lends itself to business apps and users. It would appear that the average app will be priced higher than that at the App Store.
It would also appear that there will be fewer free apps at the RIM store. It seems unlikely that a lot of developers will be willing to send the RIM $200 fee in order to have a chance to give away their software. That is not much of a profitable model for successful software development. So we can probably expect even the simplest apps at the RIM store to be 99 cents.
This is especially true given the more difficult task in fronts of a Blackberry app developer. A developer for the Apple App Store only needs to worry about the iPhone and the iPod Touch. A developer for the RIM App World store has to write software that will run on the BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone, Storm smartphone, Pearl Flip Series, Curve 8300 Series, Curve 8900 smartphone, 8800 Series, and the BlackBerry Pearl Series, according to a ZDNet article. That spells a lot more effort for the developer.
All of this probably leaves us where conjecture started on the RIM App World: the apps will cost more, they will be more business oriented, and there will be fewer of them. It almost naturally follows that the RIM operation will likely be less successful that the Apple App Store. It is also possible that developers, after exerting additional effort, will be able to make more money with Blackberry apps. So, it’s probably business as usual: more work at the RIM App World, more fun at the Apple App Store.
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March 5th, 2009
What a bunch of retards.
I would not buy one for this reason.
March 7th, 2009
Retards? No, RIM clearly doesn’t want the abundance of pure crap that solutes App Store.
Oh, Michael, perhaps you should research your article a bit more thoroughly? Minimum price is $2.99.
Suggestion: leave writing about BlackBerry to the BlackBerry sites. The authors here clearly have no clue when it cones to RIM’s devices. Seems par for the course when this site reoprts on most anything to do with mobile phones.
This article is so full of outright wrong information it isn’t even funny. Come on Michael, you normally aren’t one to just rewrite an article fron another site like Parrack is so prone to do, you’re better than this.