When Orative Corp. launches its software for mobile voice and e-mail devices next week, it won't debut on Microsoft Corp.'s popular Windows mobile platform that runs dozens of different handheld devices. Instead, it will appear on Research In Motion Ltd.'s much more exclusive BlackBerry platform.
Increasingly, third-party developers such as Orative are realizing they can't ignore the growing popularity of RIM's technology if they want to sell software for handheld devices.
“We have to look at input from our customers and be very focused on what they ask for. Today, what they are saying is the converged device they wanted is RIM,” said Paul Fulton, chief executive officer of Orative.
The Silicon Valley startup says its “presence” software helps callers connect more quickly in the business world, where odds are three-to-one against getting a live voice on the other end of the line.
For years, success in the computer industry has depended on having a large enough community of independent software developers, such as those at Orative, creating new ideas and products that will run on a proprietary platform.
That's one reason why Microsoft, whose operating system runs at least 90 per cent of the world's desktop personal computers, has been able to dominate the market for desktop productivity programs, such as word processing and spreadsheets.
RIM may lead the mobile e-mail and data market with more than three million subscribers, but it trails major competitors by at least an order of that magnitude when it comes to the size of its developer community.
The Waterloo, Ont.-based company says it has “hundreds of companies” creating programs to run on the BlackBerry platform. The research firm International Data Corp. says RIM has more than 250 partner firms working on new software, mostly in North America.
In comparison, PalmSource Inc., whose software runs Palm Inc.'s Treo devices, has 430,000 registered developers worldwide and added 26,000 in the last quarter alone, according to interim CEO Patrick McVeigh.
Microsoft, meanwhile, can boast of more than 650,000 programmers around the world creating new applications for handheld devices running on its Windows mobile operating system, IDC says.
Symbian Ltd., a consortium of wireless firms formed by Nokia Corp., no longer publishes its developer figures, but its community is considered the largest.
The numbers are not perfectly comparable because RIM's figures count independent software vendors and the other companies include many individual programmers. But the gap is significant enough that analysts have cited it repeatedly as one of the biggest challenges RIM faces as much larger companies enter the rapidly growing industry.
“Companies like Palm and Microsoft are coming from a computing environment, so obviously they have a strong following among developers. They've been doing it much longer than RIM so their [developer] community is much more mature,” said Eddie Chan, a research analyst at IDC Canada who specializes in mobile and personal computing.
But as Orative's upcoming announcement shows, independent developers are increasingly willing to commit resources to the RIM platform.
In the spring, Orative launched the first version of its software — which lets users gauge the importance of incoming calls by displaying details on the handset such as subject matter — on Symbian-based smart phones. But the executives evaluating the product for their employees were also using BlackBerrys and they began asking for a RIM-based version, Mr. Fulton said.
Orative signed up with RIM's partner program, which gave it access to technical information and support, and had a package ready for the BlackBerry in less than three months. RIM helped speed the process along by responding quickly to problems as they arose, he said.
While RIM did not respond to requests for an interview about its developer program, the company reported in June that third party development “has grown significantly.”
