Some of you may have noticed that a few developers have been exploiting the free submission of apps to BlackBerry World and using it as a promotional tool. @gpheheise pointed out to me that the worst offender by far is S4BB. As of this article BlackBerry World is reporting that S4BB has over 47,000+ Apps in BlackBerry World. The first 20-30 actually seem like good to decent quality legitimate apps and then it rapidly goes downhill. There are tons of city guides (Gdynia, Poland anyone?), audio books (is an audiobook an app?), phrasebooks, and more available for BB10 and many times also BBOS.
What really struck me is that these apps are actually borderline legitimate apps though they are really stretching the definition of an “app.” They offer different content in a similar wrapper so they show up in BlackBerry World’s search. Since they are actually legitimate apps I do not think that BlackBerry can keep them out of BlackBerry World but you would expect BlackBerry to discourage BlackBerry World flooding. I actually wonder how many of these 47,000 apps have ever been purchased or downloaded…
Either way having 47,000 apps definitely skews any BlackBerry World statistics. I am sure other App Stores have tons of spam and fart apps but I was not aware that BlackBerry World was similarly afflicted by a single developer. This just goes to show that BlackBerry should be focusing on the quality apps instead of the quantity of apps.
What do you think? How should BlackBerry handle this sort of BlackBerry World app flooding? Are they doing the right thing by letting them in and letting users decide if they should buy or ignore them?
PS: Is anyone else curious how long it took BlackBerry World’s crack squad of reviewers to review these 47,000 apps from one vendor? Could that be why it takes so long for an app to be approved?
Ronen Halevy ( View Profile) - Posts: