Back during WES time we heard about the BlackBerry Partners Fund. Essentially RIM, RBC, & Thomson Reuters promised to inject $150 million dollars of venture capital into mobile application & service development. When it was announced I was really excited about what this would mean for the BlackBerry developer community. I thought it would really boost it like the Apple iPhone and Google Android developers’ fund.
Sadly, it has been two months and the www.blackberrypartnersfund.com looks exactly the same as it did during WES. Doesn’t it look pretty? They have given simplicity a whole new meaning. I guess all $150 million of the venture fund went to creating their 1 page website and 1 email address…
Where is:
“The BlackBerry Partners Fund will be a catalyst for the development of next generation mobile applications and services,”
That Kevin Talbot of RBS promised in the press release?
Hopefully I am wrong but it is statements like the one below by David that found in the comments on the BlackBerry Developers Conference that has me worried:
… they continue to miss the crucial importance of a happy and thriving developer community. I am a seasoned developer who recently started tinkering with writing a simple application for the BlackBerry platform. So far, it has been a very frustrating experience to say the least. The crappy framework and lack of support resources have been my biggest complaints. Unless they do something soon to improve the developer experience on all fronts, they will most surely shoot themselves in the foot by losing their developers to much better platforms with far better support (ie. Android, Windows Mobile, and iPhone).
Add that to the fact that one of the most outspoken BlackBerry developers, Neil of BBSmart, has thrown in the towel on his blog www.devberry.com out of sheer frustration with RIM.
RIM, please get with the program!
DavidB ( View Profile) - Posts: