What Do Developers Really Think of BlackBerry 10?

In its formal announcement regarding BlackBerry 10, Research In Motion RIMM published a list of quotes from developers that were intrigued by the platform. Dennis Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare, said that his company is "extremely excited" to be part of BB10's launch. Bob Rosin, VP & GM of Business Development for Microsoft's MSFT Skype division, is also excited. Petri Järvilehto, an EVP at Rovio, said that his firm is "delighted" to bring Angry Birds to such a "great platform." Cisco's CSCO Raj Gossain is "proud to extend Cisco's WebEx technology to the BlackBerry 10 platform." These are the official comments that were approved by BlackBerry BBRY for publication within the firm's press release. What do other developers think of BlackBerry 10? "They're happy to have another platform to develop for," Jan Dawson, Ovum's Chief Telecoms Analyst, told Benzinga. "It's a good installed base that they should be able to sell into, so there will be some demand for the apps. That will be something that developers will be excited about." "Overall, the functionality works great," Tim Richard, co-founder of Weever Apps, told CBC. "It takes a couple of minutes to adjust, but I think Android and iPhone type touch screen users would find it easier to adjust." "I think the BB10 will have a tough fight ahead to win back their market share. It is not always the best technology that wins out," Daniel Jeppsson, founder of Funkoi Games, told FierceDeveloper. "That said, I think there is a significant, entertainment-hungry, fun crowd of people that developers can cater to on the BlackBerry platform." "I'll be honest, it (BlackBerry) is my third choice," Andrew Kamondy, founder of Toronto-based app developer 99cents, told FierceDeveloper. "But it could be my first choice depending on the app and the opportunity." FierceDeveloper also interviewed Harvey Elliot, the COO of Marmalade, who said that he liked BlackBerry's distinction between apps and developers. "They're not targeting apps, they're saying, 'We want developers,'" he said. "That's an important distinction. And they're not just using a single channel. They've been hosting webinars, there have been port-a-thons. They're really spreading their communication options." This may only be a small sampling of the thousands of developers that are working on BlackBerry 10 apps, but the general response seems to be positive (if not a little cautious). "They're gonna have a base of developers, probably mostly people that developed for BlackBerry before," Dawson added. "Beyond that I think they're gonna struggle to attract new developers until they prove that there's a big base of users there. Developers don't want to [build apps] that are only going to be used by a few people. They want to develop for platforms that have a lot of users [and] ideally make a lot of money selling the apps. It is not clear that BlackBerry 10 is the platform that fits those criteria right now." Follow me @LouisBedigianBZ