Amidst all the troubled waters happening at RIM there’s also an intense amount of excitement. In May, during BlackBerry World 2012, the company quickly showed off their new BlackBerry 10 OS, plus gave developers an incentive to get their hands on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device. At the developer session, which is called BlackBerry 10 Jam, Alex Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations, stated that any developer who creates an app for BB10, then send back the Alpha device will receive a limited edition edition BB10 smartphone when BlackBerry 10 officially launches.
Looks like RIM should possibly start preparing a whack of limited edition devices. In a email last Friday RIM sent out some stated of their BlackBerry 10 Jam sessions. To-date they have seeded over 5,000 BlackBerry Dev Alpha test devices to developers, plus have committed to visiting 23 cities in 12 Weeks – events are sold out in Toronto, Paris, London, Jakarta, Barcelona, Berlin, New York, Santa Clara and Bangalore. Now just because there are 5,000 devices doesn’t mean that there’ll be 5,000 BB10 apps submitted, but it would be a great start for the new OS.
We’ll be reporting live from the Toronto BlackBerry 10 Jam session on June 21st and will hopefully bring you additional insight regarding the upcoming OS. In the meantime, here’s what some developers are saying about BB10:
“With BlackBerry 10, RIM is providing developers with a wider selection of first-party tools than any other mobile platform available and is evolving them based on developers’ direct input. The result is that RIM is delivering high-quality tools which meet developers’ actual needs, enabling us to focus on what we do best instead of fighting with our tools.” – Matt Lewandowsky, developer, Greenviolet
“BlackBerry more than ever before is invested in developers. The tools are better than ever before, the support is there as well. I’m very excited for the future of BlackBerry.” – Arthur Phillips, Developer, GadgetNerdly
“I’ve seen without a doubt that RIM knows what they are doing and they are empowering their developers by providing all the right tools. It was encouraging seeing the BlackBerry team readily and openly answering questions of the crowd at a recent event and candidly making themselves available to developers. When a developer asked when to expect the BlackBerry 10 tools to be ready, the reply came, ‘It will be ready when you tell us its ready.’” – Mikel Calderon, teacher and new developer
