BlackBerry 10 launches today, and there are already more than 70 thousand apps available for the platform. That includes mobile apps such as Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Kindle, and Angry Birds.
The company says there are more than a thousand “top” apps already available in the new BlackBerry World… which gives the new platform a bit of a leg up on some competing mobile operating systems which often launch with few apps available.
In fact, Ubuntu Phone OS won’t even have an app store when it launches. Instead the folks at Canonical plan to focus first on the core apps that will come built-in, adding support for a third-party app store down the line.
One of the reasons BlackBerry 10 has such a large amount of apps at launch is that the company made it easy for Android app developers to port their apps to run on BB10. In fact, many Android apps can run virtually unmodified. They just need to be repackaged as Android apps.
During a recent port-a-thon, developers ported 19,000 apps in just one weekend.
That said, there will also be many native apps including media apps, games, business apps, travel, health, and finance apps.
BlackBerry World is also now a place to purchase music and videos in addition to apps — the company says there are movies and TV shows from 8 studios and all the major US music labels.
Whether any of those new apps, or the new operating system and hardware are enough to convince customers to stick with (or switch to) BlackBerry remains to be seen. There are an awful lot of excellent choices in the smartphone space at this point.
That was a little bit of a low blow to Ubuntu. I think their initial low end phone is meant for emerging markets who want some core apps and internet access. The high end phone with the capability of running a desktop on an HDMI screen is planned later. I am just guessing but I would think that they will have an app store done by the time this is released for a different kind of market. Man people are dumping on this phone big time. I for one am glad that they are trying to bring us something that isn’t a blackberry or iPhone and in the process actually innovating something new.
I think Ubuntu Phone OS looks awesome… but it is going to ship without an app store. There are plans to offer one eventually, but I was just pointing out that many new mobile platforms launch without much support for 3rd party apps — while BlackBerry 10 will launch with 70,000.
It takes more than that to make or break a platform, but it does help BB10 set itself apart.
Of course, most folks won’t care if it’s new or not… they’ll just know that the apps they want are available or that they aren’t…
That’s very different than when the original iPhone launched without any support for native third party apps (instead focusing on web apps), and people grumbled but went with it reluctantly because iOS was so different from the competition at that time.
BB is taking things seriously.I really want them to succeed, competition is always good. I might even consider a BB10 as my next smartphone.
Port-a-thon sounds cool and all but it begs the question:
Why not just run an Android phone?
Because they’ll have less control over the product and less reason for anyone to choose them over the competition if they’re just another “me to” product.
Business models are more complex than just choosing a popular product and going with it.
Blackberry for example is both a software and hardware company, using someone else’s software means giving up part of their business!
Besides, Android isn’t as secure or as private and that’s one of the reasons Blackberry is still holding onto much of their government and businesses customers around the world.
It’s just the regular user market that they’ve really been hurting. Along with businesses that don’t require as high security that then consider Android and iOS good enough that has started to erode the Blackberry market the last few years, but we’ll see how BB10 is received to see if they can turn it around now.
Any Amazon S3 client apps?