Research in Motion has announced that its BlackBerry 10 Jam for developers will run in early May. In a March 15 entry on the BlackBerry DevBlog, RIM announced that it would host BlackBerry 10 Jam on May 1-3 as a concurrent conference to BlackBerry World, the largest annual gathering for the BlackBerry ecosystem.
BlackBerry 10 Jam will be dedicated to developers and is an opportunity for them to connect with BlackBerry platform experts and learn more about the benefits and business opportunities of the BlackBerry platform. The show will give developers insight on building applications in anticipation of the launch of the new BlackBerry 10 OS later this year, RIM officials said.
Sessions and labs at the BlackBerry 10 Jam will focus on several issues, including BlackBerry Native SDK, a C/C++ environment with support for open-source libraries; HTML5 and BlackBerry WebWorks, HTML5 tools with an added layer for app enhancement through BlackBerry WebWorks; Adobe Flash (the AIR SDK for BlackBerry allows developers to build apps with Flash and AIR tools); and Android (the Android runtime will run applications that have been packaged from APK files to BAR files and submitted to BlackBerry App World).
BlackBerry 10 Jam will take place at the Hilton Bonnet Creek in Orlando, Fla. More details and info can be found here. The BlackBerry 10 Jam conference is limited to developer attendees.
Meanwhile, RIM said the BlackBerry platform has become one of the most profitable platforms for mobile developers, and according to the Yankee Research Group, BlackBerry App World has more paid downloads per month than the Android market. And in the second quarter of 2011, BlackBerry App World generated 43 percent more average daily downloads per app than the Apple App Store.
In addition, RIM said 13 percent of BlackBerry developers have made more than $100,000 from their apps on BlackBerry App World, considerably more than Android or Apple developers. And Carrier Billing, which has proven to dramatically increase paid downloads, is available with 40 carriers in 36 countries. RIM claims none of its competitors can boast those numbers.
BlackBerry App World is the premier channel for app distribution for BlackBerry devices. More than 2 billion apps have been downloaded from App World alone. The first billion were downloaded in just over two years; the second billion were downloaded in the last seven months. More than 6 million apps are downloaded every day from App World alone, RIM said. And RIM officials added that App World is available in 164 countries and territories.
