Blackberry may not have dominated the Smartphone market, but an app developer is definitely ruling over the Blackberry World with nearly 50,000 apps.
Blackberry has a high standard when it comes to business class smartphones. The Canadian company may not have taken over the smartphone market completely but it is trying to hold its own in a tough competitive market. Mobile applications add an extra value to a smartphone and give users an option to customize it the way they want. Leading smartphone making companies have their dedicated app stores with millions of apps listed for mobile users. But not all apps are popular and legitimate.
A tech news site, BerryReview, has found that a "few app developers have been exploiting the free submission of apps to Blackberry World." The site reported that a single app developer owns nearly one third of the total Blackberry apps. Developer S4BB appears to have more than 47,000 approved apps in Blackberry World, with less than 30 of its apps getting good ratings, and the quality graph goes down for the rest.
The app developer describes itself as "a young, leading edge Hong Kong based company specialized in the development of mobile applications." The app range is spread across almost all categories including "ebook readers, ebook readers bundled with ebooks, games, productivity applications, administration tools, wallpapers, videos optimized for mobile devices, mobile VoIP solutions, desktop applications for preparing data for your mobile device, multimedia mobile applications, applications combining famous web services with mobile platforms and even more interesting mobile products."
But the dominance of a single developer over the Blackberry World raises a big question if the Canadian company is focusing more toward the quantity of apps than its quality. Blackberry announced in March that it surpassed 100,000 apps and currently it displays 160,000 apps, The Register points out. The number is in close competition with Windows Phone platform but way below Android's total 844,000+ apps as of August 2013, and 900,000+ apps in Apple's App Store.
Blackberry recently has not been performing well in the face of competition from Apple and Samsung, whose smartphones have been ruling the market, easing out Blackberry. The company last year hired JPMorgan Chase and Co. and RBC Capitals to explore options of sale. According to media reports, buyers are not showing any interest in taking over the whole company.
