13% Generate Over $100,000 Annually From Their Apps, but Luring BlackBerry Developers is Still Hard

With app quality and selection now at the forefront of consumers' minds, Research In Motion is trying harder than ever to lure developers to its platform. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, 70% of consumers say apps factor into their decision making process when purchasing smartphones—but RIM knows as much as anyone that it's not easy to attract developers to a dying breed.

The situation is ugly in Canada, but even worse in the U.S.: sitting pretty with 42% of the smartphone marketshare in February 2010, the Waterloo-based BlackBerry-maker's grip has weakened to an abysmal 9%. Is there money to be made for developers in a platform with single-digit marketshare?

RIM (of course) believes so, despite a very steep uphill battle. BlackBerry App World barely has 50,000 applications, while Apple's App Store has more than 600,000 and Google's Android Marketplace has well over 300,000.

RIM early on failed to realize the importance of having a high volume of apps, so it never considered the vitality of making app development easy. Its myriad devices—all with different screen sizes and resolutions and form factors—made it a pain for developers to launch apps that worked well on every RIM device. (Perhaps this highlights some truth in the rumour that RIM will finally be streamlining its product portfolio with BlackBerry 10.)

Now, supposedly, RIM gets it. BB 10 intends to be extremely easy for developers to use. And the company also wants to emphasize that its subscribers—while few and fewer—are willing to pay for apps, perhaps more so than any other platform user base.

RIM's vice president of developer relations, Alec Saunders, stated at the company's 2011 developer conference that BlackBerry is the second most profitable app market in the mobile space, noting that 13% of BlackBerry developers are generating more than $100,000 from their products.

“BlackBerry users tend to be people who are successful, who are business people, who don’t mind spending a little bit of money on applications,” Alec said. "BlackBerry users spend more on applications."

His statements ring true. Data from the Yankee Group suggests that 15% of apps downloaded from App World are paid, the second highest behind Apple's 20%. On top of that, the average selling price of the paid apps is also higher than those of competing platforms.

But the problem is that it's not just developers who make the decisions. Sure, an entrepreneurial solo developer who wants to make a few thousand from a good idea will choose which platforms to develop for—but developer firms who create polished apps for significant enterprises must do what their clients want. And these days, clients want a iPhone app first, then an Android app, and then—only if there is time and money leftover—a BlackBerry app.