Although apps are often seen as a more consumer-oriented need, we mustn’t forget that BlackBerry’s faithful enterprise users sometimes need professional-grade apps too. In order to help bring those apps to BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry and SAP have partnered for what they call a Mobile Apps Challenge – a competition for developers using the SAP Mobile Platform to build apps for BlackBerry 10.
The incentives look pretty good in the Mobile Apps Challenge – the winning developer will receive special promotions on BlackBerry World and SAP Store for their app, an award that will be presented at a major event, and perhaps most-critically, a $10,000 prize. Two finalists will also get $3,000 each. But getting that far isn’t going to be easy. An app proposal must be submitted before March 6th, then the app needs to be published on both BlackBerry World and SAP Store before April 30th. After that, developers will need to demo apps to a jury during a web conference, between May 6th and May 8th. The jury will select 3 finalists, out of which BlackBerry and SAP will judge one winner, to be announced later in the year. Any developers who may feel daunted by the competition, however, will be reassured to know that both BlackBerry and SAP will be offering free training, coaching, and and support for any developers registered in the competition.
Before you even get to the judging however, BlackBerry does still have some incentives on offer – the first 10 developers to submit their app to BlackBerry World will receive “a free special edition developer BlackBerry 10 device.” The photos in the competition description suggest that this is a Dev Alpha B, but it does seem a little odd for BlackBerry to hand out Dev Alpha B’s at this point in time, so it may in fact be one of the red Z10 Limited Edition’s for developers.
There is a bit of a catch however – developers registering for the competition must join the SAP Mobile Apps Partner Program. That doesn’t sound too bad, until you discover that there is a pretty substantial program fee of 1,990 Euros, or roughly 2,600 USD. If the developer produces a good app, however, that fee might just pay for itself at the end of it all!
Source: SAP Store