As BlackBerry (BBRY) continues to fight the bloody battle for No.3 in the global smartphone market, apps are becoming less of a problem for the company’s new platform. Sort of. BlackBerry announced on Thursday that the BlackBerry World app store is now home to more than 100,000 BlackBerry 10 apps. The news comes just seven weeks after the 70,000-app milestone was reached. BlackBerry listed a host of popular apps and games alongside the announcement, but a quick look around BlackBerry World shows that the company still has a ways to go — many top apps are nowhere to be found and BlackBerry 10 seems to be running into the same problem BlackBerry’s PlayBook suffered from, where most of the available apps are just filler. Hopefully now that the 100,000 threshold has been reached, BlackBerry can focus on quality over quantity. The company’s full press release follows below.
BlackBerry 10 Now Offers More Than 100,000 Applications to Customers
Application catalog grows by more than 30,000 apps in seven weeks
More top brands building for BlackBerry 10 as platform launches in the U.S.
WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – March 21, 2013) – Developers continue to support BlackBerry® 10, bringing more than 30,000 new applications to the platform over the past seven weeks. BlackBerry® (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSX:BB) today announced that BlackBerry 10 customers now have access to more than 100,000 applications for the BlackBerry® Z10 smartphone on the BlackBerry® World™ storefront.
Today, Amazon Kindle, OpenTable and The Wall Street Journal are available to BlackBerry 10 customers and in the coming weeks CNN, The Daily Show Headlines, eBay, eMusic, Maxim, MLB at Bat, MTV News, Pageonce, PGA, Rdio, Skype, Soundhound and Viber will be available for download or purchase.
BlackBerry 10 customers already have access to leading apps and games, including 8tracks, Angry Birds Star Wars, ATP World Tour Live, BBC Top Gear News, Bloomberg Anywhere, CBS Sports, Delta Air Lines, F1 2013 Timing App CP, Facebook, Foursquare, Jetpack Joyride, Keek, LinkedIn, Navita Translator, Need for Speed, NHL GameCenter, N.O.V.A. 3, The New York Times, PressReader, Slacker, Songza, Twitter, UFC, USA TODAY, Waze, WhatsApp, and Zara.
“The response to the BlackBerry 10 platform and applications has been outstanding. Customers are thrilled with the applications already available, and the catalog just keeps growing, now with more than 100,000 apps,” said Martyn Mallick, Vice President, Global Alliances at BlackBerry. “Top brands and application providers are joining us every day and are seeing the benefits of being early supporters of the new platform. We constantly hear from developers that the BlackBerry 10 tools are easy to build with and that we provide opportunities for app differentiation that they do not see on other platforms.”
“It now appears that the already impressive levels of developer support for the BlackBerry 10 platform are accelerating into the launch window for the BlackBerry Z10. The prospect of a very robust app catalog can only bolster momentum for the product and the platform itself,” said John Jackson, Research Vice President, Mobile & Connected Platforms at IDC. “The ability to attract and sustain developer support is like lifeblood for any mobile platform, and it’s not something that simply happens. This progress is a testament to BlackBerry’s early and innovative engagement with developers worldwide and the innovative architecture of the platform itself.”
BlackBerry 10 applications take connecting to the next level with the ability to leverage social, gamification, and integration frameworks that other platforms are not able to offer. Customers can easily share applications with those in their social networks including BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger), Facebook, and Twitter. Applications can incorporate gaming features such as leader boards, badges, rewards and more using the Scoreloop tools, and BlackBerry 10 applications can tie to core OS integration points to allow developers to create compelling experiences to keep people moving and flow with BlackBerry 10 experience features.
In addition to apps and games, BlackBerry World for BlackBerry 10 offers access to one of the most robust catalogs of music and video content for mobile users*, with partnerships across all major movie studios, all major music labels and television networks.
The BlackBerry Z10 (all touch) is the first smartphone powered by BlackBerry 10, the re-designed, re-engineered, and re-invented BlackBerry platform. The BlackBerry Z10 will be available in the U.S. from March 22.
