Roughly a year after its initial launch, Research In Motion's BlackBerry App World now features about 6,000 applications for BlackBerry devices--double the number available in October 2009--according to RIM senior vice president Jeff McDowell. In an interview with Bloomberg, McDowell says the manufacturer is looking to boost BlackBerry App World's inventory as RIM pushes into the China, Indonesia and India markets--a team is already in China to collaborate with developers there in advance of new BlackBerry phones tailored for the massive Chinese subscriber market. "There are a lot of applications that already traverse borders but at the same time, building a local community of applications is important," McDowell said. RIM declined to divulge the number of BlackBerry App World downloads registered over the last year.
Although BlackBerry App World lags more than 100,000 applications behind rival Apple's App Store, BlackBerry application usage is higher and more concentrated during workdays than iPhone app usage according to new data issued by mobile analytics firm Localytics. Despite RIM's efforts to court the consumer segment, Localytics reports that BlackBerry app behaviors remain dominated by professional users--BlackBerry app usage is higher throughout the workday and begins to peak at 7 p.m. EST, two hours earlier than the iPhone. Moreover, there is no significant statistical difference between BlackBerry app usage on weekdays and weekends. By comparison, iPhone owners are most active on the weekends--usage at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays is 40 percent higher than at the same time Monday through Friday.
For more on BlackBerry App World's growth:
- read this Bloomberg article
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