We have a free analytics tool available to developers for BlackBerry App World™ and across all major app stores. We enable them to track applications across all those stores, but also in terms of advertising networks. So we allow them to track their own applications, to look at their rankings and see how they’re doing in each country and each store, and also look at what they’re making from each purchase and from advertising revenue.

You break it down into categories too, to see how they’re doing in each category?

Yes – so for example, they can look at the Business category or the top level of the Games category, so they can compare themselves against competitors. It makes it very relevant for them to see how they’re doing in each market.

Your service also supports Apple App Store, Google Android Market and other storefronts. For developers who build for multiple platforms, are they able to compare their data from across different storefronts if they’re selling or offering their app in those?

Yes. That’s also the added value – so they can have one chart, for example, stacking up revenue from Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Nokia. So, all the major stores we do support, and they can even integrate the ad revenue, so they can instantly see what kind of business models are working best for them.

Whether it’s a freemium or a one-time purchase or if ad-supported really is the best model – they can track it over all the different storefronts and see.

Yeah, and we see a lot of revenue coming from after users downloaded the applications. It used to be that the paid application was very popular, but right now a lot of revenue is being made from in-app purchase or advertising, so they can really see how the model is evolving for them. They can even benchmark it against the market, so they can see what proportion of revenue is generated by in-app services, what kind of ad revenue they’re making, and compare that against the market.

So when you’re looking at all the data – and you obviously have a ton of data here at your disposal – do you internally then look at that and do…is it monthly and quarterly reports?

Yes, and developers may also know our name because we publish a lot of reports about the aggregated data we collect. So we collect a lot of data from a lot of developers, and we aggregate that data and we provide reports for free on our website that give general insight into how the market is evolving. We also have paid reports that are available to other companies – mainly device manufacturers, operators and larger developers – the ones who are interested in a variety of metrics. For example, they’d like to know which apps are successful, or how large is Apple versus Google in a certain market.

The service today – it’s free to sign up for and connect to any of the stores?

Yeah, it’s very simple – just go to the website, sign up and allow us access to your reporting. We don’t need to insert any code into your application, you’ll be set up in a few minutes and you can get charting away.

What other services are you looking at now with all that data? Are there more things you’re looking at offering? I know you mentioned ads – that’s available today?

That’s available today. You can add four different ad networks right now, and we’re looking to add a few more.

What are the ad networks now?

iAd, Adfonic, AdMob, and InMobi.

When you’re looking at storefronts now, what trends do you see? We talk about advertising and in-app purchasing and freemium models, but what trends interest you? What do you like looking at when you’re looking at reports?

What’s very interesting in the east – for example, China – is that it’s gaining a lot of momentum in a lot of stores in terms of the development that’s being made. That’s a market that’s really exploding right now. What you mentioned about in-app purchases – that’s very relevant, and also looking at types of content that are popular in different storefronts. Games are typically very popular, but it differs by device and by storefront. Those trends are very interesting to look at.

Alright, so, this may be a loaded question – on BlackBerry smartphones or BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, what’s your favorite app?

For the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, I think the games are very nice, beautiful games – the racing games, I really like, and of course I always like the Cut The Rope. But the racing games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet are very nice to play with.

Alright, so thank you very much, and we really appreciate you coming out to BlackBerry DevCon Europe.

Thank you so much.

To wrap up the 2011 BlackBerry® Developer Challenge, Research In Motion® (RIM®) and the BlackBerry Partners Fund have announced the final round of Recognition Award winners at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Overall, we were very excited to see all the apps that were submitted to the developer challenge from around the world – they showcase the creativity of the BlackBerry developer community and your amazing talents. Keep these great apps coming in 2012 and remember to #BeBold!

Congratulations to these Recognition Award recipients! They receive a package with prizes consisting of tickets to the now sold-out BlackBerry DevCon Europe, a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, BlackBerry® smartphones and more.

• Best B2C app developed for a customer by an agency or ISV – Yemeksepeti by tmob
• Most useful enterprise application – MDC Mobile Data Collection by Gulliver
• Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform – Salzburger Nachrichten Mobil by Salzburger Nachrichten
• Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics – InStyle.de by ISEC7
• Top performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service – Bellshare
• Academic – Most compelling app created by a student or faculty member – Polar Slide by Dustyroom

For more information on the BlackBerry developer challenge and to read the press release visit: http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/challenge.

This, however, all changed with the addition of BlackBerry® Runtime for Android apps on the new BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0. The process of porting Android apps has now become a few simple clicks.

Sergei talked to us about BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps, the benefit of working with the BlackBerry® Java® Plug-in for Eclipse™, and why it has always been important for Second Gear Games to run apps on BlackBerry devices.

How has the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps made it easier for you to run Android apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

In the past, when we would build an Android app and then port it to the BlackBerry OS, the porting process would take us anywhere from a week to a month depending on the complexity of the game. Despite the fact that the app’s code remained in Java, there were still a number of differences between the platforms and functionalities that needed to be translated from one operating system to the other.

With BlackBerry Runtime for Android, porting apps is effortless and there is nothing we need to change in the coding of our games to make it run on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The games compile, upload, and scale themselves to the tablet in absolutely no time at all. It’s amazing what a difference it makes: it took us less than an hour to put the Android version of Shopper’s Paradise HD on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

There is no noticeable performance penalty when running an Android app on the device and all we really needed to get started was a BlackBerry App World™ vendor account and a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running the latest BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 beta.

How useful is the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse?

It’s a huge benefit to be able to use the BlackBerry Java Plug-in for Eclipse. It allows developers to use the same integrated development environment (IDE) and maintain one project on two platforms. Software isn’t perfect, minor bugs will need to be fixed regardless of how much you test it. If you’ve split your code into multiple copies to support multiple platforms, then you have to go and edit all those copies, apply the changes, and fix the bugs. But one major benefit of the common code base is that you can change only one set of files and then build for multiple targets, which is a huge timesaver.

Why is it important for you to run games on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet?

There are a couple main reasons. First of all, the uptake of paid apps has always been really good on BlackBerry devices. When we began developing in 2009 on the respective Android and BlackBerry platforms, our BlackBerry games were generating more revenue than our Android games, even though the Android market wasn’t as crowded back then. Now, Android is so over-populated and there is so much free content available that selling apps is even more of a challenge.

With BlackBerry it’s always been easier – we have a very receptive customer base that we communicate with on a regular basis, exchanging ideas and responding to any technical issues that customers might have. This relationship makes it even more enjoyable to build and publish on the BlackBerry platform.

I’m also really impressed by the device itself. I’ve tested a lot of different tablets, and to be honest, I like the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet more than any of them. It’s a really pleasant device, from its responsiveness to its user interface to its screen size – quite frankly, I like everything about it.

Thanks very much for your time today, Sergei!

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

Anyone who’s ever done a presentation with a demonstration knows the fear that builds as you take the stage. You’ve rehearsed, you’ve quadruple checked the demo, the Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®, everything – and then POOF, your demo goes off the tracks in front of 2,000 people.

Our own Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio EMEA, had this happen today during the keynote at BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Vivek was going to demo the new “Open On…” feature of BlackBerry® Bridge™ 2.0 when taking a photo. “Open On…” allows you to open a photo or other document from your BlackBerry smartphone onto your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet with one click. The demo didn’t go off as planned. This is one of Vivek’s favorite new features, so we grabbed our video production crew to tape a follow up of the demo – watch it above!

The first thing that needs to be done is to retrieve the pz_ directory and the pz_ properties file from the Windows temp directory after BlackBerry Theme Builder exports these files , but before the files can be deleted. Doing this manually would likely not work ; it happens very quickly, so you may need to apply permissions to the directory to prevent file deletion.

(Note: When changing any system permissions it is extremely important to fully understand the repercussions and only make changes at your own discretion.)

After you have these files saved to a safe place, such as your desktop of a common development directory, you can copy the pz_ properties file to the pz_ directory to keep them all in one place.

Next you will need to open the various SVG files in the directory you save and make manual changes to support the resolution and desired layout on the target device. For example, the main SVG wrapper element has width and height attributes; these can be set to the width and height of the target device’s resolution. For any other elements, the width, height, x and y values may need to be set. Here is a list of some elements which can be accessed and modified:

• xlink:href
  • CurrentDateTime
  • AlarmIndicator
  • BatteryLevel
  • Coverage
  • SystemStatus
  • GridIndicators
  • Roaming
  • SignalLevel
  • WLANSignalLevel
  • GPSMode
  • Image
  • OwnerInfo
  • ProfileIndicator

• Id
  • hs_profile_underlay
  • hs_profile_entry_icon
  • hs_profile_focus_entry_icon

• • Id
  • wifi_bullets

A forum post will be started where users can contribute additional elements and attributes in the BlackBerry® Themes & Animated Graphics board.

After you have modified all of the SVG files, you will need to compile the theme files into CODs that can be installed to your device.

First, you will need to modify the ThemeBundler.contentDir element of the pz_.properties file to point to the current directory. Then you can run the following two commands from a command prompt:

\bin\svgc.exe *.svg
\bin\tbbundle.exe pz_.properties


Make sure to watch the console for any errors when parsing the SVG. If all is successful then the theme CODs should be output to the directory specified in the ThemeBundler.outFileDir element of the pz_.properties file.

Your theme is now ready to be loaded for testing onto an actual BlackBerry smartphone!

However, this method of theme creation is not an exact science. The layout of all elements and items will take some time to get right and not all portions of the theme will be fully supported. It may take some time to get it right with several testing iterations:

while (theme != perfect)
modify SVG → compile code → load onto device → test thoroughly


It would be a good idea to progress with a small number of modifications until you reach the desired theme state. A few things to note:

1. There is a 5MB file size limit for themes on the smartphone , any themes greater than this will be rejected by the target device
2. All images exported by Theme Studio using this method will be of an incorrect size as you are targeting a different handheld. To optimize the user experience you will need to change each image to the size expected by the target device.

Once you are satisfied, you can then distribute your theme using your preferred distribution channels, including the BlackBerry App World storefront.

Have you had success creating themes this way? Let us know in the comments!

There has been a lot of excitement today about the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet developer promotion for Android™ developers, as tweeted by Alec Saunders, VP Developer Relations. Further details about the promotion will be posted on our developer site as soon as possible, but the plan is to provide one free 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to every registered BlackBerry App World™ vendor who converts their Android app for use on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and submits it to BlackBerry App World between February 2, 2012 and February 13, 2012.  How easy is it to bring your Android app to BlackBerry PlayBook tablet? Check out our Android tools site to see!

Shh…. Android Devs – submit your Android app to BB AppWorld by Feb 13 and get a free Playbook –> tools here: bit.ly/w758Ci—
Alec Saunders (@asaunders) February 02, 2012

The Android app needs to be ported and submitted prior to the deadline to be eligible for the offer. The applications will need to meet the BlackBerry App World Vendor Guidelines, and there will of course be some terms and conditions that are principally designed to prevent abuse of the promotion. We’ll keep you posted. Now get building those apps!

[Updated: Friday February 3, 2012 @ 4:00 PM]

Wow, BlackBerry developer community! You certainly weren’t shy about wanting in on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offer for apps submitted to BlackBerry App World between now and February 13. And you know what? We are in the year of “Being Bold”, and such an outpouring of interest from you should be rewarded!  We’re opening this offer to any app – BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Native, Adobe® AIRv, and Android.  Same deadline of February 13 applies.  There are some terms and conditions, but they’re there to protect you and your content. We look forward to your submissions!

1. The first thing we need to do is modify the device_profiles.properties file to include information for the BlackBerry® smartphone model/series for which we will be creating a theme.

Example:
plazmic.device<NUM>.name=BlackBerry <Model> [Series]
plazmic.device<NUM>.shortName=<Model>
plazmic.device<NUM>.modelName=<ModelName>
plazmic.device<NUM>.file=blackberry/BB<Model>.properties
plazmic.device<NUM>.thumbnail=blackberry/images/BB<Model>_thumbnail.png

<NUM> Each device listed in this file is incremented in this element. Any new element added should be exactly one higher than the previous listed.

<Model> The smartphone model you will be creating the theme for (ie. BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone)

[Series] If there are multiple smartphones with the same UI characteristics (ie BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9930 smartphone) you can include “Series”

<ModelName> The commercial name for the smartphone (ie. Bold™, Curve™ or Torch™)

2. Next we need to create the BB<Model>.properties file referenced by the device_profiles.properties file. The easiest way to do this would be to copy an existing BB<Model>.properties of a BlackBerry® 6 device, then simply rename the file to reflect the target model and update the resolution (screen.size) with the resolution of the target device.

3. We also need to create some files to let BlackBerry Theme Builder know which theme types are supported for our new device. To do this, copy an existing device’s .properties file:

Example:
<ThemeStudio>\resources\theme\BlackBerry6_480x360\9780BlackBerry6.properties

From there, rename it to suit the model of device being targeted but keep it in the same directory.

4. Finally, open this file in a text editor and change the following values:
theme.name = <Model> BlackBerry®6 Custom
theme.device = <Model>
theme.base = BlackBerry®7_<Resolution>_b
theme.alternateBase = //Remove this line entirely from the file, it is not needed
theme.supportedHandheldOs = 6.0,7.0
theme.preferredHandheldOs = 7.0

<Resolution> – The resolution of the target device’s display

After this is done, you should be able to launch BlackBerry Theme Builder and select the model of device you have just added as well as the theme layout. If this works, then you have successfully modified BlackBerry Theme Builder!

(Note: Functionalities such as previewing on device and/or simulator will not work. Test themes need to be loaded outside of BlackBerry Theme Builder for testing using methods such as JavaLoader or BlackBerry® Desktop Software.)

Exporting the theme file at this time and trying to load it onto a device will cause some usability issues, as the theme has been created for a device with a different resolution from the target device. There is a bit more work that will go into customizing the theme before it can look and function properly. This will be covered in Part 3 – Manipulating Themes. Watch for this blog post soon!

Let us know if you have any questions so far!

One feature we’re excited about is that an application can now determine how it was invoked from within the BBM application. This feature is particularly useful if you would like to run some logic within your app to see if the application was invoked through a personal message, chat bubble, or profile box title clicks. For example, your application updates the user’s BBM personal message with an achievement and is seen by their BBM contacts. When a BBM contact invokes the link, your app now has the insight from where in the BBM application it was launched. This helps you as a developer understand how users are interacting with your app through BBM and the BBM Platform.

Here are some other highlights -

• Users can manage their settings in order to “Allow [app name] to connect you with other app users”. With this feature, the user has the ability to prevent dialog boxes from prompting when making/requesting to join public connections.

• Users can easily enable the Profile Box by clicking the checkmark “Post recent activities to BBM Profile” when the app initially connects to BBM.

• The character limit for setting personal messages within the user profile has now been increased to 160.

You can now download the latest version of BBM v6.1 from the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

To get started with the BBM Social Platform and review all the features supported, be sure to check out the BlackBerry Developer Zone’s BBM Social Platform page – and stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for more updates!

Will Research In Motion (RIM®) let me modify BlackBerry Theme Studio to create themes for OS 7 devices?

Absolutely! Note that the method proposed in this workaround is by no means easy. It will require considerably more effort to get even basic themes working, but it can be used as a means to create themes until an official BlackBerry Theme Studio is released that supports BlackBerry 7 OS devices. Although these steps are being provided, this method of creating themes is essentially unsupported. Theme creation and stability will entirely be the responsibility of the developer; no bugs will be logged against this method of creating themes.

If Liquid Graphics broke theme support, then how can themes be made?

For the most part, the anatomy of a theme has stayed relatively unchanged between OS releases. With the introduction of BlackBerry 7 OS, several screens now use a completely new mechanism to create the UI, known as Liquid Graphics. Because of this large change, some features and functionalities supported in previous OS themes may be unsupported. This would be a limitation of BlackBerryTheme Studio 6.0 not being aware of how themes are expected in BlackBerry 7 OS. For example, both the phone and home screens previously used SVG for layouts and actions; in BlackBerry 7 OS, the phone screens no longer use SVG at all, while the home screen only uses SVG for layout purposes. All animations on the home screen and the layout of the phone screens are handled by Liquid Graphics.

Understanding how BlackBerry Theme Builder works

For the sake of simplicity, I will be referring to the BlackBerry Theme Studio 6.0 installation directory (wherever you may have chosen to install it on your system) as <ThemeStudio>.

Once BlackBerry Theme Builder is launched, it starts off by determining which devices and theme types are supported by reading bundled property files:

1) <ThemeStudio>\resources\devices\device_profiles.properties
This file contains a list of information for all supported BlackBerry smartphone models, including a link to a file which describes the characteristics of each device and a thumbnail view of the device.

2) <ThemeStudio>\resources\devices\blackberry\BB<Model>.properties
One of these files is included for each device model/series supported by BlackBerry Theme Studio. It lets BlackBerry Theme Builder know information about the device, such as display resolution, supported fonts, et cetera.

3) <ThemeStudio>\resources\theme\<ThemeDir>\<Model><ThemeType>.properties
Once BlackBerry Theme Builder reads the list of supported devices (1) and determines their properties (2), the next step is to determine which themes are available for each device. All found theme types will be displayed in the splash screen’s Select Layout Type drop-down. These themes will be based off the .thm file located in the same directory as this file.

After BlackBerry Theme Builder launches, and you make your changes to the theme and export your created masterpiece, BlackBerry Theme Builder does the following:

1) Analyzes the theme for any changes from the base theme (the default theme loaded by BlackBerry Theme Builder before any modifications are made).

2) Any changes found results in certain files being created during the export process by BlackBerry Theme Builder.

• Layout changes: SVG and associated PME files are created.
• Image changes/additions: New image files are included.

The more modifications that are made, the more files that will be exported (one image file for each image that is added). The SVG files are used to specify the layout, behavior, and reference the appropriate image files for the various icons, backgrounds, and other UI components.

3) These files are exported to the current user’s Windows® temp directory in a folder named with the following format:
pz_<5-RandomLetters>

Also, a properties file will be exported to the temp directory in the following format:
pz_<5-RandomLetters>.properties

4) BlackBerry Theme Builder then compiles these files into the theme COD file and stores that COD in another folder in the Windows temp directory with the same naming format.

5) BlackBerry Theme Builder then copies the COD to the defined output directory along with the required installation files (JAD, ALX etc) and deletes the two directories created in Step 4 from the file system entirely.

By now you should have a good idea of how BlackBerry Theme Builder figures out which devices should be supported and what happens in the theme export process behind the scenes. This should serve as a good base for the next section where we go into how to actually interrupt the build process for BlackBerry Theme Studio to create themes for devices that are not originally supported. Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog post series!

Got any questions about building BlackBerry themes in the meantime? Let us know in the comments!

At CES 2012 in Las Vegas, we previewed the upcoming BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 software, which is designed to have the BlackBerry® Runtime for Android™ Apps built-in! This offering will allow developers to repackage their existing Android™ applications to run on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, as well as the upcoming BlackBerry® 10 devices.

Seeing the great response for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps at CES, developer meet-ups and conferences that we’ve attended over the last few months, we’re expecting a huge interest in the consumer space for these apps when the update is made available next month. We want to ensure that you are able to capitalize on this unique opportunity by having your applications available when BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is launched!

In order to ensure that your packaged and signed Android app is available in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront for the release of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, be sure to have your app submitted by Monday, February 6th, 2012.

To help with the process of submitting your application for approval and entry into BlackBerry App World, we strongly recommend the following:

• Before submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to remove all mention of the word “Android” from your application. Both in the application description and the application itself.
• Please remove all links to Android Market from within your application.
• When submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to select a minimum BlackBerry PlayBook OS of 2.0.
• Please make sure your application is signed. For more information on code signing, please view the code signing documentation on the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps webpage (linked here).

We’ve released a few different options to convert your application (from APK to BAR) which are:

• The BlackBerry Plug-in for ADT, which is designed to augment your existing Eclipse development environment
• The BlackBerry Packager for Android apps, which is designed to allow you to test/convert your app through your browser (no downloads required!)
• The BlackBerry SDK for Android apps, which is designed to give you access to command-line arguments for scripting and getting your hands dirty

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy the porting process is. You can of course submit your application at a later date, but in order to ensure broader reach and exposure to consumers, I would strongly suggest having it submitted by February 6th, 2012.

If you have any questions, our Android microsite is extremely useful, or feel free to drop by our forum or tweet us (@BlackBerryDev). It’s a great time to be a BlackBerry developer!