With the release of BlackBerry 10 development tools to developers, RIM has made a huge promise to BlackBerry developers. Alec Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations today announced that RIM guarantees that developers will earn $10,000 in their first year of sales and if you don’t quite reach $10,000 then RIM will pay you the difference.
Sounds enticing to make a BlackBerry app now doesn’t it? However, there is a catch – the app must pass BlackBerry’s new stringent quality certification guidelines to ensure your app isn’t crappy. So that means no fart apps will qualify for this offer. Once the app has passed verification and is published to the store, the app must first generate $1,000 on it’s own before RIM will jump in and cut you a cheque.
It’s a very interesting approach RIM is taking – Paying developers to make great apps. However, some speculate that this is RIM trying to gather market share again since BlackBerry is slowly but surely dying out… Apparently paying developers is one way to do it.