The BlackBerry Partners Fund has revealed the winners of its WebWorks competition, after almost doubling this year's prize money compared to last year. According to the fund, this year's prizes were valued at $3 million, a move aimed at attracting developers.
Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner, and Steven Ambrose, MD of Strategy Worx, say organising a competition such as this one is an attempt to attract app developers to the BlackBerry operating system.
“A competition like this attracts developers and ensures a certain level of quality. They hope that after the event, developers will stay, and more will start developing on the platform,” explains Ambrose.
Moreover, Ambrose and Milanesi suggest that increasing the prize money was probably motivated by a decision to augment this attraction. They say last year's competition may have had a poor response. Ambrose adds that this was due to the negative publicity surrounding Research In Motion (RIM). However, he says: “Money talks, and more money talks louder.”
Milanesi points out that attracting developers to build apps is crucial. “High-end consumers are getting used to having apps running on their devices, and they want choice and good quality,” she says. The two also agree that Apple and Android are leading in terms of attracting developers to their operating systems.
In addition, developing apps might not be enough, according to the analysts. Ambrose says apps dominate the mind space of mobile platforms, but they may be a passing phase. At the same time, Milanesi argues, getting more apps will help increase sales, but RIM “still needs to get the devices right to start with”.
The BlackBerry Partners Fund says winners are judged on quality and use of development best practices, level of visual appeal, user experience, and creativity and innovation. It adds that winners for the Europe, Middle East and Africa division were: Grand Prize Winner - Daily Express UK (vendor: Refresh Mobile); First Runner-up - Twinoo Lite (vendor: Razum d.o.o.); and Second Runner-up - Interlecta (vendor: Interlecta OOD).
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