RIM Investing $100 Million to Build Developer Community – Is it Too Late?

By Thea Neuman (Google)

It appears that Thorsten Heins can’t stand the slow pace of RIM anymore, even though he is trying to sort out things as fast as he can. Enough has been said about Heins, who was appointed as RIM’s CEO and President in January 2012. The piece of news which we are going to reveal to you now will literally make your jaw drop

According to the latest reports of E27, RIM is about to invest whopping $100 million in order to expand the community of developers for projects related to BlackBerry platform.

This risky decision can’t be made casually; there certainly lies something beneath the surface which is hidden from the eyes of critics and leading tech-industry analysts.

What is that thing which has infused new hopes among RIM’s top management team members? Could it be the success which RIM experienced during its Blackberry 10 Jam World Tour? It seems that RIM is in ecstatic mood after witnessing the positive feedback which came from developers’ community.

It has become a known fact by now that RIM is pinning all its hopes on upcoming Blackberry 10 models and RIM’s ultimate dream of making a great comeback may come true, provided the developer community shows great interest in Blackberry platform and worldwide developers wholeheartedly lend their support to RIM.

RIM’s top management is using an entire bag of tricks in order to keep bankruptcy at bay. In spite of so many problems, RIM is confident that loyal fans of blackberry won’t turn their backs at RIM and they will continue to extend their support to the company that is currently going through a very tough phase.

RIM is leaving no stone unturned in order to grab developers’ attention. Reportedly, RIM will run some exclusive programs for developers in order to lure them to Blackberry platform.

E27 tried to shed some light on how this plan may turn out to be a win-win situation for both RIM and developers. RIM would offer a developer a sum of $10,000 to create a paid app on a condition that this app should be able to fetch minimum $10,000 during a year, after its launch.

RIM is also chalking out plans to provide 12,000 alpha devices of Blackberry 10.

As far as extension of its own developer team is concerned, the company is aiming to hire about 100 developers by this quarter end. RIM is also restarting their certified BlackBerry program for developers in order to make sure that they possess the required skills and necessary expertise for developing Blackberry apps.

The pleasant news for RIM is that its hard work regarding mobile development has started bearing fruit. In a short span of time (barely 3 months), RIM has witnessed impressive 220% growth in mobile phone apps, which are available in the “App World”.

When it comes to paid apps, Blackberry tops the chart, followed by iOS. Regarding revenue generation by developers, once again it’s blackberry developers who generate roughly about 4% more revenue for an app/month than iOS developers and 35% more revenue than Android developers.

Looking at RIM’s current situation, these achievements may not make much sense because a new report indicating that developers of Blackberry are searching for better work may further upset RIM.

Even if we ignore the whole investment thing, looking at the time factor, a question which comes in minds is that, is there really sufficient time left to improve RIM’s current situation? What if this pricey attempt of saving RIM falls wide off the mark?