Jae C. Hong/Associated Press BlackBerry owners may be able to type circles around their iPhone-toting friends when it comes to speeding through e-mails. But when the work is over and it’s time to play with the latest useful or silly applications, their speedy thumbs have nowhere to go. By the latest count, the Apple iPhone has 100,000 apps and the BlackBerry has just a few thousand.
Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, is out to change that. On Monday, it began a conference for BlackBerry application developers in San Francisco. And it is announcing a series of new technologies meant to make it easier to make interesting apps for its phones.
Most significantly, the company will open the network of servers it uses to deliver e-mail to allow applications to send information and alerts to BlackBerry users. This network uses what is called push technology to send information, rather than requiring the phone to periodically check if there is any new message. R.I.M. says that its approach uses much less network bandwidth and battery power than other phones.
A company can send messages to users, including sports scores or stock quotes, that can be displayed in applications or on widgets — mini-applications visible on a phone’s home screen. The system also allows an application to send information directly to another BlackBerry running the same application. This peer-to-peer communication can be useful for social networking and games.
R.I.M. is adding other features meant to make it easier for developers to write applications. For example, there are new tools to allow the sort of three-dimensional graphics used in games. And there are new programming tools meant to speed up what has been a difficult process of writing BlackBerry apps.
The company wants to make writing for its phones more lucrative as well. The programming system for apps will make it easy to include advertising sold by several advertising networks. And developers will be able to sell extra content or features to customers from inside the apps, with payments charged to a credit card or PayPal account. Soon, these fees will be able to be charged to cellphone bills.
“This is all about, how do developers make money not by being 1 in 100,000, but by offering rich transformative applications?” said Jim Balsillie, the co-chief executive of R.I.M., in a telephone interview.
A handful of companies, including Yahoo and Electronic Arts, have had a head start using these new tools and will have some applications available soon. But it will be months before BlackBerry users will see if R.I.M. has found a cure for their app deficiency.