BlackBerry Developer Blog » magmic

For Your Viewing Pleasure – More BlackBerry 10 Jam Super Sessions [VIDEOS]

Alex Kinsella — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:44:04 +0000

For those of you who enjoyed our first set of BlackBerry® 10 Jam Super Session videos from BlackBerry World™ 2012, we’ve got even more coming at you today. Check out the set of videos below to see live demos with partners from Magmic, Marmalade and Wikitude, plus our very own Tim Neil (Director, App Platform & Tools Prod Management) expanding further upon BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and bbUI.js. Whether you want to relive the awesomeness of BlackBerry 10 Jam or you couldn’t be with us in person, these videos are must-watch!

Take a look and let us know what you think:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Seeing is Believing – BlackBerry 10 Jam Super Session [VIDEOS]

Alex Kinsella — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:23:05 +0000

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam Super Session was a chance for some of our partners to show the world what the new possibilities for building apps with the BlackBerry 10 platform.

Partners from Xtreme Labs Inc, Wikitude, Magmic, Macadamian, Marmalade, Poynt, and SAP joined Christopher Smith, VP, Handheld Application Platform & Tools and Alec Saunders, VP, Developer Relations on stage to showcase what is possible with BlackBerry 10.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Ka-Glom! How Magmic monetizes and amplifies their addictive apps and games with BlackBerry

Luke Reimer — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:57:52 +0000

Monetizing Freemium Products to Work for You
Magmic is a leading BlackBerry® app developer and publisher with mobile games such as Rubik’s® Cube, The New York Times® Crosswords, THKLive and Ka-Glom. Join us for rare insight how these products were developed, specifically looking at what business models were used on the BlackBerry platform.

Joshua Ostrowalker, CTO with Magmic
Ryan Henry, Engineering Lead with Magmic Games

As a content creator, vendor, and publisher, Magmic Inc. is as versatile as they come in the mobile application development world. Founded in 2002, the Canadian firm develops its own original contentfor some of the top brands in gaming, media, and music. Looking forward, the company is focused on increasing its product portfolio for the BlackBerry® platform – a continuation of a long and successful partnership that has spanned nearly a decade.

Troy Johnson, Magmic’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, tells us about working with the BlackBerry® Advertising Service, BlackBerry® Messenger and the Research In Motion® (RIM®) Developer Relations team.

Tell us about your decision to employ the BlackBerry Advertising Service.
We started using BlackBerry Advertising Service in December 2010 with our game Ka-Glom! It was a free product, so we had a significant user base but no way to monetize it. After taking the APIs that were available, we integrated interstitial ads into the game. It was so successful that we committed to use the BlackBerry Advertising Service with another 19 products. We chose products that were good performers but not our top revenue generators, and decided to make them free and integrated with the BlackBerry Advertising Service. Free products have a much larger user base which we’re able to monetize using ads and by offering a purchasable ad-free product.

How important has the BlackBerry Advertising Service been in terms of revenue generation?
In this industry, it’s not easy to bring an ad-enabled product to a market, look at that ad revenue, and then decide to develop more. But that’s exactly what we’ve been able to do with the BlackBerry Advertising Service. Using the service doubles or triples the click-through rate we get with other ad services that deliver standard in-game banner ads. The BlackBerry Advertising Service has contributed significantly to our revenue and enables us to produce other products.

Magmic also has a large suite of paid apps. Why have you had so much success with paid BlackBerry smartphone apps compared with other platforms?
One of the strengths of BlackBerry is the security that we’re afforded when we launch a product. When we launch a product as a paid product on the BlackBerry platform, we’re confident that we’re going to maximize the potential. The marketing effort we’ve invested in and the ongoing marketing support provided by RIM greatly increase our chance of success. There isn’t a thriving industry of pirated BlackBerry content that would undermine our joint marketing effort.

How important has it been for Magmic to work closely with RIM?
Our partnership with RIM has been hugely important to our success for a couple of reasons. RIM has always helped us access the BlackBerry market by allowing us to participate in a number of marketing campaigns including the latest ones, such as BlackBerry® 7 and BlackBerry Messenger 6. We don’t have the same level of access to other markets, and there isn’t the same level of commitment from other OEMs to help content providers succeed. Whether it’s giving us pre-commercial devices to test or simply picking up the phone to get answers to our questions, RIM has been genuinely committed to our success for years. Our contact at RIM through the BlackBerry® Alliance Program has been an angel.

Thanks again for talking to us today, Troy! Be sure to visit Magmic’s site to learn more about this great app development company.

BBM 6: Apps Made Viral

Theban G. — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:06:26 +0000

And we’re live! BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) 6 was released today along with a number of apps that showcase the power of BBM integration. Developers from around the world have leveraged the viral effects of the BBM APIs by allowing users to invite and share app experiences with their friends on BBM. They’ve also added new features – like in-app chat powered by BBM – for a more socially engaging app experience.

Here’s what some of our partners are saying:

“Players have always been able to play Backgammon King against real opponents but playing against your friends took a lot of time and effort,” said Troy Johnson, Director Strategic Initiatives, Magmic. “Your BBM contacts are your friends and BBM 6 is making it incredibly easy to share Backgammon King with them and invite them to play in real-time. The ease of access to our product, the ease of sharing and the ease of player engagement are each major breakthroughs. Combine those attributes of BBM 6 with Magmics’ industry leading in-game chat design and you have an incredibly entertaining experience. Trash talking your best friend over a game of backgammon has never been easier and more fun. It’s no exaggeration to say, for Backgammon King, BBM 6 is a real game changer.”
“PowWow uses BBM 6 integration to enable real time social event coordination,” said Kathryn Lahrs, Founder, Lahrs Apps. “Users are directly invited and notified of events that are created with our application. With PowWow, the latest information is available and BBM chats can quickly be started if any further communication is desired. Through BBM 6 PowWow users can share their location information, which is displayed in BlackBerry Maps. There is also an option to check your contact’s availability directly from their calendars and to create an event with this information; this is a very useful tool in event planning and saves time in the process.”
“BBM 6 is the underlying mobile social network making Wikitude on the BlackBerry platform a very unique experience. An augmented reality (AR) browser with millions of interesting places is already a very compelling and new proposition, but bringing it to life with millions of people who can chat, meet and share in an AR environment has the potential to revolutionize how we interact with one another. With BBM 6 and Wikitude preloaded on upcoming BlackBerry smartphones our AR browser will be truly going social for the very first time,” says Andy Gstoll, CMO of Wikitude.

And the best part is we’re just getting started. We’ve opened the gate to a community of over 45 million users who send over 1 billion messages per month, and we know that community is hungry for more apps that integrate with BBM. Take Jingu Apps, a company that focuses on building apps for the BBM community – they surpassed one million downloads in the first month after launch.

We also have a number of exciting events happening this summer that are focused on recognizing developers building on BBM:

BlackBerry Developer Challenge 2011 – Most Addictive social app using the BBM™ Social Platform: Submissions are now being accepted into the competition!
BBM Apps Hackathon: The contest is now closed, but stay tuned for more details about the great apps that come out of this event!

BBM is a leading mobile platform that provides an exceptional level of message delivery and receipt, so start thinking about what the BBM Social Platform can do for your apps!