BlackBerry App World stats: six million daily downloads, higher profitability than Android
Alec Saunders, RIM's VP for Developer Relations, used the BlackBerry DevCon Europe stage today to “bust a few myths” about the state of the BlackBerry app ecosystem.
Context & Ripple Effects
RIM came into DevCon Europe under pressure: within the past month it has shown evidence of Android apps running on BlackBerry hardware, confirmed canceling both the BlackBerry Colt and Milan handsets, and faced rumors it is down to a single BlackBerry 10 smartphone in development. Developer confidence is the asset RIM most needs to protect heading into a platform transition.
Alec Saunders' 'myth-busting' session — six million daily App World downloads and a claim of higher developer profitability than Android — is a developer-relations counteroffensive aimed at keeping studios building for BlackBerry while BB10 ships. The story traveled widely the same day, picked up by outlets including AppleInsider, eWeek, and Android Community, which itself signals how contested the Android-vs-everyone narrative had become.
First-order effects
- Developers deciding where to allocate porting effort now have an on-record RIM claim that App World monetizes better than Android, directly challenging the default assumption that Android's larger install base wins the economics.
- The claim lands just as RIM has cut its hardware roadmap to fewer devices, making per-user developer revenue — not device count — the metric RIM must defend to keep its catalog intact through the BB10 transition.
Second-order effects
- Google faces pressure to rebut the profitability framing with its own developer-revenue disclosures, especially with ComScore data already showing uncharacteristic slowing of Android's US growth at the end of 2011.
- If RIM's numbers hold up under scrutiny, smaller platforms gain a template for courting developers on revenue-per-user rather than scale, raising the bar for every ecosystem pitch in 2012.
Third-order effects
- App-store competition shifts from download counts toward verified developer earnings, pushing all platform holders toward publishing monetization data as standard practice — a structural change in how mobile ecosystems are marketed and judged.
- For RIM specifically, the pattern points to a bet that a smaller but more profitable developer base can carry the platform through the BlackBerry 10 relaunch; whether the claim survives independent measurement will decide if that bet is credible.
The trend: Mobile platform holders are increasingly competing on claimed developer profitability rather than raw install base or download volume as they fight to hold developer ecosystems against Android and iOS scale.