Advantages of BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry 10 offers several different SDK options that you can use to build your app, each one offering language and platform choices that best suit your experience and the requirements of your app. Once your app is built, you use the BlackBerry World vendor portal to reach customers and track users all over the world. This section describes some ways in which this rich and vibrant ecosystem can help you.

Capabilities of the BlackBerry 10 OS

The BlackBerry 10 OS offers these features to help you monetize your app:

• Advertising Service: The Advertising Service API lets you create and manage banner ads within your app.
• Payment Service: The Payment Service API lets you create and manage digital goods and subscriptions from within your app.
• BBM Social Platform: The BBM Social Platform API allows you to access the social features and functionality of BlackBerry Messenger from within your app.
• Scoreloop: The Scoreloop API allows you to integrate the social gaming features of the Scoreloop SDK into your app.
• NFC: This short-range communications API allows your app to interact with smart posters, point-of-sale purchasing systems, and other mobile devices to exchange information.

The advantages of BlackBerry World

The BlackBerry World storefront provides a vibrant interface, streamlined purchasing process, and established payment methods to give your customers a consistent experience for managing their apps. The BlackBerry World vendor portal lets you distribute, upgrade, and track your app across BlackBerry device users around the world.

• Content promotion: Dedicated content channels and feature banners that provide prime real estate to help distribute your app to the right users.
• App discovery: Universal search, top lists, social sharing, reviews, and ratings help users find the right app.
• The Games app (in combination with Scoreloop): A specialized portal for gaming allowing multiplayer, social connections.

The BlackBerry World storefront is the fastest growing app store across all platforms (Distimo, Q1 2012), offering higher monthly revenues per app (VisionMobile Developer Economics study, June 2012) across 80 million subscribers in 170 markets. Here are some interesting facts and figures:

• Over 3 billion apps have been downloaded (September 2012)
• Over 105,000 apps approved for sale, with over 45,000 registered vendors (September 2012)
• The total number of downloads in 2012 has already surpassed the number in 2011, with unique downloads growing by 54% (September 2012)
• BlackBerry apps generate 40% more revenue than Android apps (Yankee Group study)
• In the second quarter of 2011, BlackBerry World generated 43% more average daily downloads per app than the Apple App Store (Yankee Group study)

In terms of revenue, top BlackBerry app vendors using the Payment Service have earned $200K over three months and $420K over six months, for the period ending August 2012.

(both images for North America, between June and August, 2012)

The BlackBerry World vendor portal offers reports on downloads, purchases, subscriptions, and refunds that you can use to track the progress of your app.

Carrier billing

BlackBerry World offers carrier billing, which allows users to charge purchases directly to their phone bill. This method of payment speeds up and simplifies the purchasing process as users don't have to worry about the details while they're using the app. Where carrier billing is available, app sales in BlackBerry World tend to increase by 100% to 300% and carrier billing makes up to 75% of all sales (May 2012). Here are some other interesting facts about carrier billing (taken from a May 2012 snapshot):

• 27% of users purchase two or more items a month
• 32% of users return to purchase items the following month
• 25% of users spend more than $4.99 per month

For more information on carrier billing, visit the BlackBerry World site for developers.