RIM Denies Survey Findings That Say RIM Not Hit With Developers

By Thea Neuman (Google)

It appears that criticism and negative reports are getting on the nerves of RIM’s top management officials. It has become almost a kind of routine that we get to see negative reports about RIM.

According to the latest survey done by researchers at Baird Equity Research on 200 application developers, it has been found that developers are slowly losing interest in RIM’s upcoming Blackberry 10 operating system, as it fails to provide long term prospects to developers. In statistical terms, the long term prospect on a scale of 1 to 10, predicting optimism has reduced to 3.8 from a former quarter figure of 4.6.

This new survey has further increased the woes of already troubled Blackberry maker RIM. It appears that RIM won’t even get a short respite before it sorts out everything. While on one side RIM is failing to earn impressive ratings, on the other side, its arch-rivals Android and iOS are showing impressive ratings of 8.7 and 9.3 respectively.

By debunking this survey finding, Alec Saunders (RIM’s VP for developer relations) expressed his surprise and revealed that this survey finding doesn’t portray a genuine picture regarding developers’ interest in BB 10 OS because since RIM’s Blackberry JAM World Tour, RIM has been receiving positive feedbacks from developers worldwide. According to Saunders, there lies a wide gap between truth and report findings, as developers are indeed showing great enthusiasm and keenness. However the survey figures are telling altogether a different story. Saunders further added that Blackberry tour turned out to be an action packed event and due to developers’ enthusiasm, the registration capacity fell short.

Saunders didn’t forget to remind that RIM’s retailer base that basically sell apps in App World of RIM has witnessed an impressive growth by 157% during last year, and the portfolio consisting apps for Playbook (RIM’s tablet) has witnessed 15,000 new apps since Jan onwards.

Those developers that are keen about developing apps for upcoming BB 10 models, will have to bide their time since RIM unexpectedly delayed the launch of BB 10 models and the release has been rescheduled for early 2013.

Even if we ignore this survey conclusion which depicts another gloomy picture for RIM, how can we ignore the fact that Heins has really lost track of time as he tries to sort out everything together. While releasing BB 10 models should be his first priority, he unfortunately ended up in delaying the release. No wonder after realizing this blunder of delaying BB 10 models, top management officials (of course including Heins) are literally tongue tied.

No matter how much they try to pretend that they are satisfied with this delaying-up decision, at the end of the day it is gradually becoming clear that RIM is fighting a losing battle but still nothing is impossible in this world, especially in tech-world where destiny changes overnight. There are always ways to deal with problems and bounce back from difficult phase, provided the leader is capable and possess a charismatic personality. We hope that Heins would turn out to be that great leader.