A Look At RIM’s Accomplishments in 2009

Mike Kirkup over at the Developer’s Blog has a great post up recounting RIM’s accomplishments for 2009 with respect to BlackBerry developers. It’s a great list that includes all the major highlights such as the Developer’s Blog technical webcast, App World, the Developer Conference, the Developer Zone, their YouTube channel, as well as the most recent developments with OS 5.

• Launch of the BlackBerry Developer’s Blog and technical webcast series!Over 200,000 Registered BlackBerry developers.
• Doubled the size of the developer community over the past year with substantial international growth.
• Launch of BlackBerry App World with follow up releases including a new client and a web store.
• Launch of the Developer Issue Tracker providing an open environment for developers to submit issues and feature requests tracked against Research In Motion’s internal development queue. An industry first!
• Best BlackBerry developer event ever with the 2009 BlackBerry Developer Conference.
• BlackBerry Partners Fund Developer Challenge ends in a dramatic Final 16 showdown live at the BlackBerry Developer Conference and awards more than US $250,000 in prizes.
• Revamp of the BlackBerry Developer Zone making it easier to find what you are looking for, download tools and get started developing.
• Launch of many new BlackBerry developer programs and resources including:
1. Video tutorial library with videos now on YouTube®! Go to www.youtube.com/blackberry and select one of the developer playlists. 2. BlackBerry Academic Program for mobile application development. Visit www.blackberry.com/developers/academic for more info. 3. BlackBerry Certification Program for application developers. Visit www.blackberry.com/certification for more info.
• Launch of numerous developer tools and technologies including:
1. BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse v1.1, Beta 2 for Java developers. 2. BlackBerry Widget SDK v1.0 Beta 2 for web developers. 3. Web development tools BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio v1.2 and BlackBerry Web Development Plug-in for Eclipse v1.0. 4. BlackBerry Theme Studio v5.0 for BlackBerry theme developers.

Not bad huh? If RIM is going to beat out the competition, they’re going to have to continually introduce new tools for developers and push harder to attract the best in the industry.




© Kyle for BlackBerry Cool, 2009"