RIM renames App World to BlackBerry World, opens reg for $10k guarantee and offers a QWERTY dev unit

There's no question that RIM knows how key attracting as much developer support as possible will be to its upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform, and that's where its focus seems to be at the BlackBerry Jam Asia event in Bangkok. CrackBerry's live blog notes that RIM has announced a new name for its store, going from BlackBerry App World to just BlackBerry World (likely due to its dedicated sections for music, movies and TV shows) as well as a number of regional partners pledging support for the platform like Baidu, Kantana and Fox Sports. Another feature shown off at the event was the ability of its keyboard handle multiple languages and prediction within a single conversation. It also celebrated the success of a recent port-a-thon event, continuing to tout the ease with which devs can bring their projects from iOS and Android to BlackBerry 10.

The SDK gold release is scheduled for December 11th with all the APIs necessary, and developers can register for that $10,000 Built For BlackBerry incentive guarantee starting today ahead of the January 21st deadline. While you're signing up for that, BlackBerry app makers who want to try out the new hotness on a device with a physical keyboard should sign up for a Dev Alpha C unit. After passing out 7,500 Dev Alpha units since May, its promising these to the top 1,500 people who sign up, have submitted two apps or more and are ranked by score based on certain other developer activities. Also, those original 7,500 can sign up to swap their Dev Alpha for Limited Edition BlackBerry 10 hardware after launch. Counting 60 million active BBM customers in Asia and claiming it's both the largest and fastest growing segment there we expect to see continued focus from RIM there, as of now we're only a couple months away from finding out how the world reacts to BlackBerry 10.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM

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Source: CrackBerry, Research in Motion (Twitter), Dev Alpha C