There’s no doubt that when it comes to developers, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has tried to maintain a closer relationship than any other platform manufacturer. RIM’s developers are also among the best paid in the industry overall, which in an of itself is reason enough for many developers to choose RIM.
However, RIM is giving developers more reasons to choose creating for BlackBerry over other platforms as it continues its attempts to “jumpstart” developers on the new BlackBerry 10 platform. With the new OS on the horizon, RIM knows that developers are the lifeblood of the platform’s success, so the company is investing $100 million to build a developer community, and will be looking at different programs to attract developers to the platform.
One such program is already in place: RIM pays developers $10,000 to make a paid application so long as the app makes at least $1,000 of BlackBerry App World sales in its first year. RIM has also been giving out free PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha (shown above) devices, and continues to do so as its BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour continues.
The question is, will it be enough to convince developers to stay?