Tyler Lessard, the Director of BlackBerry Alliances & Developer Relations at RIM, addressed an eager and excited crowd at tonight’s MobileMonday™ Toronto. He was outspoken and demonstrated loads of enthusiasm regarding new opportunities in the marketplace. “If you’re looking to be successful in the BlackBerry market,” Tyler said, “I hope to give you some examples in where to look.”

Developing Applications to Capture Market Opportunities
There were a number of main threads in his address that included some sneak-peek data on the BlackBerry Application Storefront, applications that are leading the charge on Smartphones, “push” services from RIM, and the fact that developers and users are going to see more memory and more bandwidth available for applications in the near future. To the latter point, this is very good news for applications looking to transmit rich-information across networks, such as high quality video or social gaming. 

“Although there are many opportunities,” Tyler cautioned, “you shouldn’t just exploit them – but ensure that the user experience remains good for the user.” He specifically mentioned that applications shouldn’t consume inordinate amounts of memory and battery life, and it would be best for applications to be “smart” and to transmit the majority of information when connected to WiFi hotspots rather than over carrier-based networks. Lastly, applications should have a slick user interface – the goal is to make the experience to best as possible for users. Tyler noted that he is beginning to see interesting adoption patterns in social applications.

The BlackBerry Community is Booming
There are over 100,000 members of the development community today. These members represent both corporate (in-house) developers, and commercial providers including enterprise solution providers and consumer focused products. There are also over 1,000 companies that are part of the RIM partner program; this group used to be more enterprise-heavy, but that is now changing to include many consumer-focused companies.

BlackBerry Application Storefront
Tyler has let us partway through the front door of the BlackBerry Application Storefront (BBAS). Below is a list of some of the latest gossip:

• Developers will have access to the BBAS through a vendor portal where they can see where they are in the approval process
• The payment mechanism is via PayPal
• Vendors will have a PayPal ID to manage payments
• The BBAS will be initially focused on consumer space – a big part of the driving is going to be the young market; people who use social networks, instant messaging and email
• The process designed to be as transparent as possible to developers
• The BBAS will support free and paid apps in the storefront – and YES – ad-supported applications are okay!
• Upgrades of applications will be available through the storefront (more information will be coming next week when BlackBerry updates the FAQ section of their site)
• BlackBerry will do the best they can to get applications through in a timely matter (hopefully in the matter of weeks); it will be dependent in some degree, depending on what’s happening
• BlackBerry is trying to make sure that existing applications get out in the market quickly
• BlackBerry is continuing with the open community model, and will allow developers to distribute apps through their own sites, carriers, and the BlackBerry Application Storefront
• Supported firmware: 4.2.1 and higher - trackball based devices ONLY (pearl and above, and obviously, the Storm)
• When an application is submitted, developers will be able to choose which versions of firmware, device models, or carriers they would like it to support
• It is the intent of the BBAS not to block applications, but there may be applications that will have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, such as third-party applications targeting core email services
• Initially the geographical launch for the storefront will be North America and English-speaking Europe
• RIM plans to Internationalize the BBAS shortly after it’s initial launch by opening it up to a number of countries and languages
• BlackBerry Application Storefront Registration: www.blackberry.com/submitapps

Resources for Developers
If you’re serious about getting your applications into the BBAS, here are a number of URLs that you will find interesting:

• www.blackberry.com/developers (BlackBerry Developer Portal)
• www.blackberry.com/partners (BlackBerry Alliance Program)
• Look into utilizing their “web signals” service for web-based applications
• Push-to-java application service coming soon! (tip: search developer zone for “push API”)
• Make sure to attend the BlackBerry Developer Conference 2009 – coming this fall

The purpose of this post is to help out a lot of the developers and existing businesses in the community by offering up a little insight into the opportunities that exist (through the eyes of Tyler Lessard), and by sharing all the information I have on the BlackBerry Application Storefront.

Feel free to join our community and post your comments and feedback on our blog. We want our public blog to act as a place for discussion in the mobile community. I'm looking forward to hearing all your thoughts.

Best of luck in building your applications!

-  Josh