Deals @ Amazon:
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the
troubled maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, said it’s gaining
developers, even as some mobile application makers, including
YouMail Inc., are stopping work on RIM products.
YouMail, which provides caller identity and voice-mail
services for smartphones, said it was stopping development on
the BlackBerry version of its visual voice-mail app., citing a
“steady exodus” of users moving to Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and to
Android smartphones.
Alec Saunders, vice president, developer relations for RIM,
responded in blog yesterday, saying YouMail’s statement was a
“little bizarre” and its basic premise was wrong. While
BlackBerry “has some challenging times ahead,” visual voice
mail “isn’t a business anymore,” as it is a feature that comes
with most phones, Saunders said.
RIM said last month it’s weighing strategic changes after
market-share losses to Apple and handsets that use Android
software led to five straight quarters of sales shortfalls. The
company pledged on March 29 to redouble efforts to attract
business customers while reviewing options, such as licensing,
partnerships, joint ventures and other ways to “leverage”
assets.
“Developers are not abandoning BlackBerry,” Saunders said
in an interview today. “The evidence doesn’t bear that out.”
The number of developers registered with BlackBerry App
World’s store increased to 34,000 in February, from 9,600 a year
earlier, Saunders said in the interview.
YouMail said it won’t continue working on the BlackBerry
version of its app because it’s “seen our BlackBerry audience
steadily shrink, with a steady exodus of those users moving to
the iPhone and to Android.”
‘Musical Chairs’
Most of YouMail’s users are based in the U.S., where RIM’s
share dropped to 13.4 percent of smartphones used in a three-
month period ended in February, down from 16.6 percent in a
three-month period ended in November, according to researcher
ComScore. (SCOR) Together, Apple and Android controlled 80.3 percent of
the market.
“It’s a little bit like musical chairs,” YouMail Chief
Executive Alex Quilici said in an interview today. “You have
limited resources, and right now, there’s no seat for RIM for
us.”
Developer interest in BlackBerry declined to 15.5 percent
in the first quarter, down from 20.7 percent in the fourth
quarter of 2011, a survey of 2,173 developers conducted in
January by Appcelerator and IDC found. Fewer people were “very
interested” in developing for the BlackBerry operating system
than in building apps for Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows Phone operating systems.
Last year, Seesmic Inc., a maker of an app that lets users
post to social networks Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn
Corp. (LNKD), announced it will discontinue its support of the
BlackBerry to focus on Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Olga Kharif in Portland at
okharif@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Ville Heiskanen at
vheiskanen@bloomberg.net
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.