RIM may be struggling to have its BlackBerry smartphone keep pace with other industry leading devices in the mobile space today, but the company says at least 13% of its BlackBerry App World developers certainly aren’t struggling financially.
According to RIM vice president of developer relations Alec Saunders, the BlackBerry App World storefront is more profitable for devs that the competing Android Market owned and operated by rival Google.
Saunders revealed this week at the BlackBerry DevCon Europe conference that BlackBerry App World sees more than 6 million app downloads every 24 hours. Saunders alleges that App World now produces 43 percent more daily downloads per mobile app than Apple’s App Store.
More interesting to the developer community, however, is Saunder’s assertion that 13 percent of RIM’s developers earn $100,000 or more annually.
BlackBerry, which only controls roughly 16 percent of the total U.S. smartphone market as of late 2011, is struggling to not only retain customers but also developers.
By trumpeting the profitability of the BlackBerry App World store, perhaps the developer community will take a fresh look at the otherwise fading smartphone platform.
