Cross platform porting: BlackBerry issues
Created by hasan.kamal under BlackBerry
RIM is a company known for its BlackBerry product and service that business professionals all over the world rely on to keep in touch with their business operations. However, the attitude taken towards the development of its OS is rather restrictive in nature. RIM does not let developers easily access their SDK while most of the app development for BlackBerry happens in a J2E environment. This situation does not assist in specific app development since there are significant problems porting apps to phones that have varying screen sizes and require changes in icons, etc. Considering that many platforms encourage and support porting of apps; BlackBerry has been limiting the development of apps in this dimension.
This limited growth potential for app development is what has been holding the BlackBerry app development from gaining significant impetus in comparison to the unbridled growth in the iPhone and Android platforms. Resultantly, BlackBerry has realized the growth potential of both these platforms will overshadow their own platform. In response to the looming threat of the iPhone and Android platforms, BlackBerry is hosting a developer’s conference in November in an effort to generate interest in the platform.
The nature of J2E is focused and touted as being cross-platform friendly; the BlackBerry OS is not cross-platform friendly and has caused numerous developers to shift to other app development platforms.
However, the upcoming conference plans to provide hands-on tutorials for developers and further encourage firms to create killer apps for the BlackBerry device. The primary reason being that to remain competitive amongst Android, iPhone and webOS, Blackberry must encourage app development on all fronts.
The upcoming conference in November plans to be a key facilitator get developers onboard and focused about the BlackBerry OS. The problems in porting new apps to the existing technology should be resolved if BlackBerry wants developers to being app creation and retain interested developers.
What do you think? Should RIM allow increased access to the functionality of devices or should they maintain the Java environment? For our developer readers, what other issues do you face when developing for BlackBerry’s platform? Leave your thoughts or comments below.