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RIM wooing Indian developers to build apps

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: It's been nearly two months since Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry smart phones, opened BlackBerry application platform to developer community world over.

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While industry analysts called it as RIM's first strategic move to encourage and attract application developers to build apps for BlackBerry App World, the company took a second step to open up BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) platform for integration with applications.

Also read: BlackBerry services causing headaches for IT

Certainly, RIM's move to allow application integration with BBM is seen as a powerful business proposition for developers and is considered a strong reply to the biggies of application world, Apple's App Store and Nokia's Ovi Store.

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BlackBerry App World has over 25,000 apps with an average 3 million downloads per day and the App World is now available in more than 100 markets, including India.

Also read: Will Microsoft buy BlackBerry to take on Apple?

The company is wooing developers through BBM's user popularity and massive reach and also by offering them a potential market place to monetize their apps under a revenue sharing model.

Currently, there are over 43 million BBM users worldwide and the usage saw a 500 per cent increase in 2010. Globally, there are over 3,70,000 BlackBerry developers. Among them, more than 1,00,000 are new registered developers who joined the community this year.

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“From India, about 26,000 plus developers have joined the community, which includes developers working for corporates and enterprises. Already, they have built apps integrated with BBM for Indian users and market,”said Annie Mathew, RIM's head of Alliance and  Developer Partnerships —India.

According to Mathew, BlackBerry Alliance program is a tiered program for commercial relationships, offering technical as well as sales and marketing benefits to partners.

In fact, Chennai-based Consim Info has developed applications for its websites BharatMatrimony IndiaProperty on the BlackBerry platform. Both apps offer a deep insight and features to users, which can be easily shared with other users via BBM. Other apps include Cricket with Friends and AskLaila.

“NGpay, India's largest mall on mobile with over 125 brands, has built app on BlackBerry to create brand campaigns to  reach out to audience. Besides, Fine Dining app for booking tables at restaurants has also been integrated with BBM,” Mathew informed.

“We have realized that Indian developers need to be addressed and are working closely with independent software vendors to develop apps for India,” said Krishnadeep Baruah, RIM's director of Marketing — India.

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