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Windows Programming

Notes months, coupled with the security features the manufacturer offers, will make it a viable
alternative to the other three. And while TCS is currently not working on anything for
BlackBerry platform from the security standpoint, he said that the company plans to do
this in the near future. Getting a big software player like TCS to work on its platform is a
big plus for BlackBerry.
This is because the stakes are huge. According to an IDC report released in January 2012,
the world's mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion by 2015, representing 37.2 per
cent of the total workforce. Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will see the maximum growth
from around 601.7 million mobile workers in 2010 to 838.7 million in 2015, spurred
primarily by India and China.
Many of them will be carrying smartphones and being the number fourth in this list, one
expects BlackBerry to try that much harder to woo developers because apps hold the key
to smartphone adoption.

Ironing Out the Creases

One of the things that might help BlackBerry could be its native functionality, said Sunil
Mishra, Senior Software Engineer, Creative Commons, who has been developing apps on
both Android and BlackBerry.
"Both are good, but BlackBerry has a richer user interface." Mishra said that he would
continue to develop apps for BlackBerry in spite of his knowledge of Android because, as
he put it, "Android is easy to learn but difficult to debug."
Such news will be music to RIM's ears, which will no doubt want to increase its market
share in India – a tough thing to do if you are not a major player because the market for
smartphones is rather limited in India as of now. In November last year, Gartner said that
while Indian mobile handset sales would reach 231 million units in 2012, an increase of 8.5
per cent over 2011 sales of 213 million units, very few would be smartphones. In fact, in the
first three quarters of the calendar year 2011, smartphone sales in India made up 6 per cent
of total device sales, and this is expected to increase only to 8 per cent in 2012. View this
statistic in a different light, and this translates to about 18.48 million smartphones being
shipped in India in calendar year 2012, with BlackBerry taking a relatively smaller
percentage of sales.

Another big problem with BlackBerry is the total number of apps available. According to
Annie Mathew, Head of Alliances and Developer Relations, India, Research in Motion,
there are about 50,000 apps on BlackBerry's App World, which is a very small number
when compared to Apple, which has at least 5 lakh apps on its App Store. But BlackBerry
is trying to turn around its smaller base by offering a customised service to developers,
she says. Citing an example, she says that when Dhingana, which was launched on the App
Store two years ago, first came to BlackBerry, they had a lot of issues, but BlackBerry's
team helped them to resolve them. "It is important for developers that they should find it
easy to develop apps," she said.
And some developers are finding this to be true. Vineeth Karunakaran, Senior Software
Engineer, USD Global, who has been developing apps for BlackBerry for three years (he
also develops J2ME apps for Nokia and other platforms, besides writing apps for Symbian)
says that he shifted to developing for BlackBerry because of the satisfaction he gets from
the platform. "We are able to do everything we want. It is better than offerings from
competitors," he said.

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