Single Developer Accounts For A Third Of 120,000 BlackBerry 10 Apps
Earlier this year BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins touted a much-improved 120,000 apps in the App World store. What he failed to mention was that one single developer accounts for far more than his fair share.
According to a Berryreview.com report, developer S4bb has an incredible 47,000-plus applications residing within the company’s understocked app portal..
While the quantity of apps in your store is something to brag about, the quality of apps is arguably more important. As AllThingsD reports, S4BB traffics in some pretty weak stuff, software that often fails to meet even the loosest definition of “app.” Among its offerings: Innumerable lock apps, repurposed city guides, audiobooks, and an array of content apps that seem to be built around RSS feeds from the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Weather Service and the CDC. And then there’s Mega Shaver, Mega Machine Gun and, inevitably, Mega Fart.
According to the company’s site, S4BB develops “applications for the mobile market like ebook readers, ebook readers bundled with ebooks, games, productivity applications, administration tools, wallpapers, videos optimized for mobile devices, mobile VoIP solutions, desktop applications for preparing data for your mobile device, multimedia mobile applications, applications combining famous web services with mobile platforms and even more interesting mobile products.”
BlackBerry has been offering $100 per approved app, while top notch offerings can scoop up to $10,000 for when they’re submitted to the app world. It appears one developer has figured out a way to take advantage that benefits neither BlackBerry, beyond the number boasts, or its users.
BlackBerry has issued a statement on the massive number of apps that one developer, S4BB, has in BlackBerry World. They note that BlackBerry World is an open market and developers do what they need to do to bring in revenue – which is true for any business – and that they’ve also built up the Built for BlackBerry program that makes distinctions between the abundance of apps by highlighting quality apps:
“Developers in all app stores employ a number of different monetization tactics. BlackBerry World is an open market for developers and we let market forces dictate the success or failure of these tactics. Discoverability in overcrowded stores continues to be an issue affecting all developers. This is why we have worked hand in hand with developers on the Built for BlackBerry program to help showcase apps and games that exemplify the power of BlackBerry 10.”
