RIM Boosting Ecosystem With BlackBerry APIs

Written by Adam Gosling

Friday, 30 March 2007

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is increasing the smartphone's ecosystem by beefing up its support for Java in the hope that more third party developers will create software for the phones. RIM says that more than 125,000 registered developers have already downloaded the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE), which exposes thousands of Java APIs which provide developers' access to almost every functional component and application on a BlackBerry. Over 500 software organizations have already officially joined the BlackBerry ISV Alliance program offering hundreds of business solutions and thousands of lifestyle applications. "Push-email paved the way for the early success of this market, but mobile applications will drive the next phase," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. "The BlackBerry JDE has already enabled the development of hundreds of horizontal and vertical business applications and thousands of lifestyle applications on BlackBerry smartphones. We are now opening the BlackBerry platform further with the release of additional APIs that can help fuel the next wave of mobile applications in areas such as Social Networking, Multi-Media, eCommerce, News and Information Services, and Location-Based Services." Among the new APIs are Mobile Multi-Media with support for MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC and AMR audio formats with support for routing audio playback to the external speaker, connected headset and Bluetooth headset. There is a Camera APIs and ones for Wallpaper and Ringtone customization interfaces, XML and Web Services support, Messenger APIs and ways to access the File System to manage documents and other files. APIs to support GPS either with a local GPS chip or external GPS receiver connected over Bluetooth and Maps with address or a route functionality. BlackBerry Maps provides developers all of the geo-coding and mapping data for free. In the future support for 3D Graphics for more powerful gaming and rich-media content as well as support for MMS Java APIs to complement the existing SMS and Phone APIs which enable third party applications to listen for incoming phone calls and SMS messages, invoke the phone application to place a call, and compose SMS messages for peer-to-peer messaging. The BlackBerry platform is also designed to extend its inherent security, network efficiency, reliability and push capabilities to any application, so developers can focus on their core application offerings rather than the underlying infrastructure that enables wireless connectivity. Related news items Seven In Unwired Takeover Bid -26/09/2007 Major Players To Test WiMAX Interoperability -26/09/2007 Next-Gen 3G RAZR DownUnder -24/09/2007 Telstra Launches Another Coonan Attack -12/09/2007 Semi-Rugged With Grunt -05/09/2007 Newer news items BlackBerry Extends Reach To The Office Desktop -08/05/2007 Telstra's Pearl BlackBerry Pearl -06/05/2007 RIM Offers BlackBerry Curve -03/05/2007 SAGEM my401C Gets Pretty In Pink -10/04/2007 New Nokia's For GSM and CDMA -02/04/2007 Older news items BlackBerry 8800 In Australia -28/03/2007 Palm To Update Treo 750 OS -27/03/2007 Palm Backs Hands Free -27/03/2007 SAGEM Offers Another Shell -26/03/2007 Google Phone Would Be Significant Departure -19/03/2007 Tag This Now: