BlackBerry 10 Gets 15,000 Apps Submitted

By Paul Thomson :: 8:51 AM

RIM is raising the stakes to ensure that when it launches its BlackBerry 10 soon, the app store will be well outfitted for users who have been waiting a long time for the new handset hardware to come to market.

The company just hosted two developer events that it called “Port-a-Thons” to encourage application developers to create apps and port over their existing apps to the RIM / BlackBerry App Store. They sweetened the pot by offering developers $100 for any application that was submitted and approved for the store. The cash offer seemed to do the trick, as over 15,000 apps were submitted in under two days.

Not all of those 15,000 apps submitted will make it to the app store, of course, but this showing, even though induced by some carrot-and-stick measures, does demonstrate that RIM is trying very hard to make BlackBerry 10 a viable platform in a world dominated by Apple’s iPhone and many Android devices.

In addition to the cash bounty, RIM also ran a contest with BlackBerry hardware as the prizes. The first developers submitting two to five apps that were then selected for the app store would receive a free PlayBook, and those writing more than five apps were entered into a drawing to receive a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device.