RIM to spend $100 mn on developer eco-system

BANGALORE,INDIA: Research In Motion (RIM) which recently announced hundreds of job cuts, wants to improve its developer eco system in a big way. For this, the Canadian cellphone maker has set apart a $100 million fund.

Alec Saunders, VP of developer relations for Research In Motion (RIM), says he sees his company's plan to cut jobs and improve the developer eco-system as two different issues. "The job cuts are happening as part of the company's restructuring plans in order to increase efficiency in operations," he said.

Saunders refutes the reports about developers increasingly abandoning RIM's BlackBerry platform. "The BlackBerry platform today has around 40 lakh developers working globally and the average earning of developers on the RIM platforms is about $3000. Developers can build applications for our platform at half the cost when compared to other platforms and revenue reward for developers is the second highest in the industry," he said.

"We have a fastest growing and most lucrative platform for developers. The RIM's fund to support the developer eco-system guarantees an amount of $10,000/per year for successful developers," he added.

We are seeing an impressive growth on the platform since last two years. We have registered a 226 per cent increase in applications on our platform during the last one year, our PlayBook platform has witnessed a 240 per cent growth. We are the fastest growing platform, he reasoned.

The delayed BlackBerry 10 is being built to ensure Flow, Connect and Extend, the RIM VP explained. Flow is where the apps will make use of our unique cascade framework, Connect is the social feature and Extend is the idea that your experience with the device extends beyond the device itself, he explained.