Appcelerator's Community of Over 300,000 Worldwide Developers Expand Native Mobile Application Support on RIM's BlackBerry Devices

  

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We are pleased to announce Appcelerator is extending our core value of cross platform native application development beyond iOS and Android, on to RIM's BlackBerry devices. This provides even more extensiblitiy of the Appcelerator Titanium mobile application devleopment platform.  This is a huge win for enterprise customers trying to mobilize their core applications on to Blackberry devices.

Developers continue to take advantage of the Appcelerator Titanium platform by managing a unified code base of JavaScript, and targeting native mobile applications on iOS, Android and now Blackberry.

Read complete corporate announcement and press release.

Additional information:

Question:  What made Appcelerator decide to support BlackBerry?

Answer:  Appcelerator aims to support all mobile platforms on which developers have opportunities to create compelling mobile apps. The new BlackBerry devices and operating system are a significant step for RIM in the smart phone market.  Appcelerator Titanium will make the development of native BlackBerry 10 OS applications faster and less expensive for everyone looking to support the development of native applications across all of the key platforms.

BlackBerry remains dominant within Enterprises, over 90% of them currently supporting a BlackBerry Enterprise Server [BES] for email and messaging.  In the smartphone world, outside the US and Western Europe, BlackBerry is the number one operating system.

Long term, Appcelerator believes there will be a number of different operating systems vying for the smartphone crown, with no dominant operating system for the foreseeable future.  We believe that in order for developers to touch the largest audience for their applications, an open extensible platform like Appcelerator Titanium will be a requirement.

Question: When will BlackBerry support be available?

Answer:  As the BlackBerry 10 OS continues to evolve and increasing numbers of devices become available later this year, Appcelerator will make available this support to our audience of 300,000 mobile developers. Developers using Titanium for native iOS and Android will be able to output native applications to BlackBerry in early fall 2012 using the same JavaScript codebase and ACS native support

Appcelerator Titanium currently supports BlackBerry 7 OS via its mobile web solution, and via Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS) for the rapid integration of location check-ins, photo storage, chat and 12 other cloud connected services.

Question: Will support be available for BlackBerry via ACS?

Answer: Appcelerator will support BlackBerry with all 15 cloud-based API's.  These services are available through Titanium Studio for apps built within Titanium and also for native applications built for BlackBerry OS 10 and all previous versions (accessible through rest-based APIs).

Question: What are your plans to support other RIM platforms?

Answer: Appcelerator and RIM are currently focusing on the BlackBerry OS 10.  We will continue to work with RIM and support their ongoing platform development efforts.

Question: Will Appcelerator support Windows?

Answer: We believe that the Windows 7.5 operating system and forthcoming Windows 8 platforms are a significant step forward in mobile operating systems from Microsoft. Appcelerator aims to support all mobile platforms on which developers have an opportunity to create compelling mobile apps. We are currently evaluating Windows native support and will let our community know as our plans develop.

Appcelerator Titanium currently supports Windows 7.5 via its mobile web solution and via ACS with 15 cloud-connected services.

Question:  What type of apps do you anticipate being built for BlackBerry?

Answer: Our core belief is that compelling apps are attractive to anyone regardless of operating system.  We expect many of our developers who have built applications using Titanium will port them to BlackBerry 10 OS.  Our support for BlackBerry further enhances the appeal of Titanium to all customers that want to mobilize and create any type of app on multiple platforms.

Question: How will native apps on BlackBerry differ from those of other touch screen smartphones (ie:  Android and iPhone)?

Answer:  The majority of the BlackBerry 10 OS devices will be touch enabled or touch plus keypad.  While there will be differentiated user experiences due to the differences in the operating systems, developers can use Appcelerator Titanium and build their application in JavaScript. Titanium developers can target iOS, Android, mobile web, and now BlackBerry OS 10 with device and operating system specific functions during development.

Question: Will Appcelerator support RIM’s security and privacy capabilities?

Answer:  Security will continue to be supported on the devices and by the BES.  We will continue to work with RIM to enable the BES to secure and manage applications and data on these devices.