When BlackBerry officially launched its BlackBerry 10 platform along with its BlackBerry Z10 & Q10, the company’s VP of global alliances and business development Martyn Mallick stated 40% of all BlackBerry 10 applications were ports of Android applications. After nearly two months of BlackBerry 10 being available, Mallick is now saying that number has been cut in half to 20%.
Mallick spoke with AllThingsD recently on why exactly BlackBerry decided to choose to port Android applications rather than have its developers build BlackBerry 10 optimized apps from the start. “We give [developers] a very nice on-ramp to get onto the platform.” Mallick said. “Our users deserve to have great content. If [porting Android apps] is the fastest way we can get some of that content, that’s great.”
The decision to allow for Android ports to be used for BlackBerry 10 versions of a developers app had everything to do with speed, which is why BlackBerry World is flooded with apps at this point. The majority of them may be clones of popular games and applications on competing platforms, but we guess it’s better for there to be something available than nothing at all.
Filed in . Read more about Android, Apps, BlackBerry and BlackBerry 10.