BlackBerry 10, the platform the company is betting big on, has now crossed 100000 apps, out of which 20% are claimed to be Android versions. This was confirmed by Martyn Mallick, BlackBerry’s vice president for global alliances and business development, in a chat with AllThingsD. This number was reached sooner than expected, after 30000 apps were approved and added to the BlackBery World store in the last few weeks.
On the topic of Android apps available on the BlackBerry 10 platform, the BlackBerry exec said, “We give them a very nice on-ramp to get onto the platform. Our users deserve to have great content. If that is the fastest way we can get some of that content, that’s great.”
Mallick said that the developers who had initially planned to just do a ported version for BlackBerry 10 later changed their minds after seeing the potential, and focussed on native apps. Certain developers are also tweaking the ported versions to take advantage of BB10 features like the Hub. A couple of examples include Amazon adding certain features when it ported over the Android version of its Kindle app, and eBay is adding support for push notifications to the original Android app it ported to BlackBerry 10.
On the point of some big apps like Instagram and Netflix still missing in action on BlackBerry World, Mallick said, “There are still some partners that are not in a position where their schedules line up with our schedules. There are some partners where their priorities are elsewhere, not even necessarily in mobile.”
But this is all great news for BlackBerry, considering it is closing the gap fairly rapidly to Microsofr’s Windows Phone ecosystem, which has been around for a bit more than 2 years now and claims to have 130000 apps in the Store. As users, we surely love the variety, but quality needs to be of primary concern.
Source: All Things D