Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the popular blackberry smartphones, is giving away a whopping $500,000 to developers as total prize money to be won with series of events/contests to prepare for the much anticipated BB 10 launch. On Jan 11, 2013, two Port-a-thon will be held simultaneously and virtually for mobile app developers and will last for a total of 36 hours. For every mobile app developers that participates, here are the incentives;
- Port one (1) – five (5) approved apps – $100 per eligible app –to a maximum of 20 paid applications per Vendor
- Port five (5) – ten (10) approved apps – THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED (200) QUALIFIED PARTICIPANTS receive one (1) BlackBerry Dev Alpha Device plus $100
- Port ten (10) or more approved apps – THE FIRST TEN (10) QUALIFIED PARTICIPANTS one (1) paid trip to BlackBerry Jam Europe to celebrate the launch of BlackBerry 10 with us plus a Dev Alpha Device as well as $100.
- Additionally for those that did not receive a BlackBerry Dev Alpha, or Trip to BlackBerry Jam Europe, we will be conducting a random draw for one hundred (100) BlackBerry 10 Dev Alphas and ten (10) trips to BlackBerry Jam Europe. All those who meet the criteria for a Dev Alpha Device or the Trip but were not one of the firs 200 or 10 , respectively, to qualify, are eligible for the respective draws.
This is a great strategy by Research In Motion to get more developers to develop and submit apps on their platform and to make sure that a new user on BlackBerry 10 wouldn’t miss much coming from another platform.The same event held in december were incredibly impressive. According to RIM Dev Relations, more than 4,000 apps were submitted in the first All Aboard BlackBerry 10 Port-A-Thon event. Mobile app makers submitted all different types of apps for BlackBerry 10 in all kinds of languages from every part of the world.With the series of events, RIM is hopeful they will be over 100,000 apps for the BlackBerry 10 before Launch
