BlackBerry maker touts developer support

From CNET News.com: BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is turning to developers to help it keep its business alive as sales of the once popular smartphone drop sharply.

On Tuesday the company reported that it's been making significant progress in attracting developers to create applications for its BlackBerry Playbook tablet and its upcoming handsets using the BlackBerry 10 software.

In the fiscal fourth quarter of 2011, which it reported last week, the company said that it saw a 21 percent increase in new BlackBerry smartphone apps. And it saw a 240 percent increase in the number of apps created for its Playbook tablet.

As of the end of the quarter, the company said it had more than 70,000 smartphone apps in its App World store. And it has 15,000 apps made for the tablet. This is still a far cry from hundreds of thousands of apps in Apple's iOS App Store and far fewer than Google Android boasts. But RIM believes it is making headway in attracting new developers.

The company also said that it's seeing growing interest from developers to continue building new applications for its future products. The company said there was a 68 percent increase in vendors registered to develop for its App World app store. And BlackBerry subscribers are responding to the new apps in the store. The company said it's seen more than 2 billion apps in total downloaded and about 177 million apps downloaded per month.

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