Research In Motion today announced its plan to get developers thinking about BlackBerry 10 apps. The company is pushing two strategies: Built for BlackBerry and the $10K Developer Commitment.
The Built for BlackBerry program, which is coming this fall, allows you to submit BlackBerry 10 WebWorks and BlackBerry 10 Native apps for free. There will be a price tag eventually, but for now the company isn’t saying what that will be. If you participate, you will be get a “Built for BlackBerry” quality status, which you can display on your site, in the BlackBerry App World storefront, and anywhere else you market your apps.
The $10K Developer Commitment is what RIM calls its strategy for “putting our money where our mouth is.” If your app earns at least $1,000 USD on its own, but less than $10,000 USD, RIM will pay you the difference between the revenue you earned and $10,000 USD. Developers are only eligible to receive this one time. RIM says its “dev community is the best out there” and this is how it is rewarding its contributors.
There are, of course, some requirements. You must submit your BlackBerry 10 app to BlackBerry App World prior to the launch of BlackBerry 10 and your app needs to independently earn $1,000 USD in net revenue in BlackBerry App World. Unfortunately, RIM wouldn’t share when the former will be, but it did say there will be “specific dates” – note the plural.
This is a bold strategy for RIM; hopefully the company won’t lose to much money in propping up its app ecosystem. The latest rumors, courtesy of Pocket-lint, suggest the company is planning to launch six BlackBerry 10 devices. The company knows better than anyone that if there no apps, then the number of BlackBerries it ships really doesn’t matter.
See also: RIM announces BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, launching alongside BB10 devices in Q1 2013
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