RIM Offering BlackBerry Push Service to All BlackBerry Developers

RIM is now offering the BlackBerry Push Service to all BlackBerry developers and content providers. This service enables immediate pushing of rich content directly to BlackBerry smartphones, providing users instant access to desired updates as they happen (e.g., news and weather, sports scores, stock prices and other time-sensitive content).

What is the BlackBerry Push Service?

The BlackBerry Push Service enables developers to easily develop Java applications or  web widgets  that leverage RIM's push technology either through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (for enterprises) or BlackBerry Internet Service infrastructure (for consumers), so that content providers can reliably push images, text, or audio content to millions of BlackBerry devices at once. Unlike alternative push solutions that can only notify users that new content is available for download because of push message size limitations, with the BlackBerry Push Service, full content (up to an industry-leading 8KB in size) is pushed to the device and made immediately available for use. 

In addition, whereas alternative solutions may use polling mechanisms to check at fixed and sometimes lengthy time intervals whether new information is available, the BlackBerry Push Service enables development of push applications that continuously listen in the background for incoming new content and immediately notify BlackBerry device users via various means (e.g., vibration alerts, audio alerts, email messages, and home screen icons) giving your customers the same sense of immediacy  that made BlackBerry applications so successful and unparalleled in the industry.

What is being made available today?

The BlackBerry Push Service has two options. The first is BlackBerry Push Essentials which is a free service. The second is BlackBerry Push Plus, which has a free tier and paid tiers.  All of the features and capabilities of the BlackBerry Push Service described above apply to both BlackBerry Push Essentials and the free tier of BlackBerry Push Plus (up to 100,000 pushes per day). 

In addition to what BlackBerry Push Essentials offers,  BlackBerry Push Plus enables a higher level of visibility and reliability by providing developers with the ability to receive notifications of delivered pushes (includes time and specific device information) as well as the ability to change the time or cancel push requests that are queued to be delivered to various BlackBerry devices.

There's a diagram on BlackBerry.com that gives a good visual representation of the infrastructure behind this service: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/javaappdev/pushapi.jsp#tab_tab_works

How can developers and content providers get more information?

Developers building on the BlackBerry Application platform can visit www.blackberry.com/developers/pushservice for additional information, resources and tools. And there's no cost to register and evaluate this service.  When a developer is ready to launch the service they should select either the BlackBerry Push Essentials option or BlackBerry Push Plus option, depending on their specific push feature requirements and provide number of pushes required.

Is anyone using these services yet?

Companies using the BlackBerry Push Service include Time, Sports Illustrated, The Hockey News, and Weather Bug Elite.