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BB DevCon 2012: Thorsten Heins on RIM's commitment to developers and BlackBerry's vibrant platform

#bbdevcon And PlayBooks for all

BB DevCon 2012: Thorsten Heins on RIM's commitment to developers and BlackBerry's vibrant platform
In his first public speech since taking over the reins from RIMs much-maligned co-founders, new president and CEO Thorsten Heins highlighted what he described as the company’s "vibrant platform".

Taking a friendly and informal approach, he said he was happy to give his debut presentation at the company's first European developer event.

"It shows mine and RIM's commitment to our developer community," he said.

PlayBook for all

Held in Amsterdam's Rai conference center, BlackBerry DevCon Europe is RIM's largest developer conference to-date with more than 2,000 attendees.

Focusing on changes within the company, Heins revealed that full developer support relations teams are being set up in the EMEA, Latin America and APAC regions to better support local studios.

As part of this shift, the company continues to freely give out its PlayBook tablets to developers.

Everyone at DevCon received a free unit; something it will be rolling out to other conferences and hackathons.

Making money

Of course, one of the big things RIM has to demonstrate is that there’s a strong user base for its devices.

Citing information from Evans Data, Heins said that 13 percent of developers make more than $100,000 from the App World store.

"That’s more than on iOS," he said. "This speaks to the economic power of our platform."

To-date, more than 2 billion apps have been downloaded from App World, around 6 million daily.

"We're seeing an average 13 percent quarterly growth in app revenue on App World," Heins said.

The other vision

This is also feeds into the company highlighting what it considers to be its continued strong growth.

"We’ve grown our subscribers base 35 percent year-on-year," Heins pointed out.

He also claimed BlackBerry is the #1 smartphone in the Netherlands, the UK, Spain (all in terms of pre-paid devices), plus in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and South Africa.

"We are ready to compete, make no mistake. I am confident in our path forward,” he ended.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.