It would appear that when it comes to getting BlackBerry PlayBook Apps approved in BlackBerry App World, Research in Motion is trying their best to treat developers like Apple does when it comes to approving apps for the App Store. Long time BlackBerry developer Shape Services has been waiting since May 19th hear back from RIM on if it is going to approve IM+ for BlackBerry PlayBook, a multi-platform instant messaging client popular on BlackBerry smartphone devices and there is simply no reason why it should take this long to either be approved, or, be denied.
Sitting in the BlackBerry App World approval abyss for nearly two months has prompted SHAPE Services’ Maria Dyatlova to post about the situation on Google+.
It’s Maria from SHAPE, the company behind IM+.
First of all I have to say that we love BlackBerry, many of us in SHAPE have BB Bolds and Curves as main devices, we support BlackBerry by developing apps since the BlackBerry platform appeared and we wish RIM to succeed.
But how are they going to compete with Apple and Google if they don’t work with developer community? The situation with developing for Playbook scares me.
We have hired a flash developer who developed IM+ before Playbook went on sale in Europe. It was a very big and challenging work (I won’t tell anything about the quality of the developer tools for Playbook as I’m not a developer) and finally we have submitted IM+ for App World testing on May 19th. We expected the app to be approved in a week or ten days at latest.Two weeks went, and nothing happened. We started to contact our main contact at App World but it appeared she’s no longer with that team and she recommended to contact other App World representatives. App World support didn’t answer any of the multiple emails we’ve sent.
Three weeks went and we’ve sent emails to Developer Relations team we had talks with on different events like MWC and WES. Multiple times we were trying to contact them via Twitter (@BlackBerryDev). But they didn’t help.
A month went, we tried all possible ways to contact RIM team. Sent emails from our CEO and COO, contacted App World management people via LinkedIn, nothing helped. RIM didn’t provide an official answer and it seems they just do not want IM+ to be published.
Maybe we could live with it if we could distribute the app from our site, but the real problem is, there’s no possibility to install a Playbook app without the developers SDK. So the only option to install Playbook app is through BlackBerry App World.
I didn’t want to write this post , as there are already too much claims for BlackBerry from both employees and developers. Again, I wish RIM a success. All I want is just to find the right person at RIM who will take care of the developers questions. And finally have our app published.