Telecom Lead America: In yet another attempt to
strengthen its app ecosystem and regain its lost crown, Research In Motion and
its subsidiary, QNX Software Systems have announced a new initiative to
encourage university students in China to develop more apps and services on the
BlackBerry platform.
RIM and QNX are working with a number of universities in
China to launch an app development competition at the end of May.
The competition will provide further incentive for
student software developers in the country to turn their creative ideas into
apps and services that can be commercialized on BlackBerry smartphones and
BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.
“We are pleased to expand our work with universities
in China to provide students with more opportunities to develop their skills
and knowledge in the exciting and rapidly growing fields of mobile computing
and automotive infotainment,” said Urpo Karjalainen, regional managing
director, Asia Pacific, Research In Motion.
RIM and QNX will provide BlackBerry devices, software
development tools, technical support and other resources.
RIM has also been working with universities in China to
provide training courses for developing apps on the BlackBerry platform.
The winning apps will be made available on BlackBerry App
World and winners of the competition will have the opportunity to participate
in internship programmes at leading Chinese and multinational companies.
The company has also released in beta the developer
toolkit for the BlackBerry 10 platform, which will allow developers to build
and test their apps in preparation for the BlackBerry 10 launch expected in the
latter part of 2012.
Nokia and Microsoft to invest 18 million euros for mobile app
development program
Recently, mobile major Nokia and technology giant
Microsoft announced a similar initiative, under which each company is investing
up to 9 million euros into a newly established mobile application development
program at Aalto University during the next three years.
editor@telecomlead.com
