Comments on: Should Application Storefronts Allow App Name Duplication?

By: Total Apps-Duplicates-eBooks-Themes=Under 9K Apps in App World | 101 Best BlackBerry Apps

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:55:19 +0000

[...] are also duplicate apps. App World is the only portal to allow 2 vendors to use the same app name. When you subtract duplicates, you get 19,395 apps (including [...]

By: Total Apps-Duplicates-eBooks-Themes=Under 9K Apps in App World | BlackBerry Cool

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:43:51 +0000

[...] the site, we found:Total apps; 22,715 (of that 5,150 are eBooks)There are also duplicate apps. App World is the only portal to allow 2 vendors to use the same app name. When you subtract duplicates, you get 19,395 apps (including eBooks).To figure out exactly how [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:03:00 +0000

RIM is a very stubborn company. They wouldn’t have lost so much market share had they been more customer focused.

Instead of discouraging developers, they should do everything that they can in order to expand partnerships. As it is, when you hear the word “app”, you think Apple.

I am going to now check to see if my Apps on Blackberry App World have been a victim of pirates stealing my ideas and app names. I know that I don’t have to check this with the iTunes store since apps get rejected for these reasons.

Thanks for the insightful article.

By: Jckgffnnv

Jckgffnnv — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:57:00 +0000

Thank you for this article! It is an issue that I’ve been battling with RIM for a few months now. I have an App which we invested a ton of time and money in order to get to be a real and popular product. So much so that we hit at least 6 top 10 lists and a major book publisher (Wiley Publications) asked if they could include a page about our App.

This name recognition started to help sales and we were able to invest in a forum, customer service, bug fixes and new releases. This success led to a pirate from overseas putting up a “me too” app with the identical name.

While I embrace competition, this is more about developing a brand. After doing working with iTunes over the past few years, I know that your app will get rejected if 1) your app has the same functionality and 2) has the same name.

In wanting to have the developer community flourish, they have taken away the hurdles that developers may face by implementing this strict policy. Developers, for example, won’t have to pay $500 in trademark lawyer fees and wait 1.5 years to legally do battle. Additionally, Apple does not want confusion on their store. Anyone, afterall, can study a successful app and just mimic the code and slap it up on the store with the same title.

In my opinion, this is just one example as to why the Blackberry is failing. Their attitude of “we are the best” has caused them to lose market share at all levels. Additionally, they don’t embrace developers as partners and, as a result, don’t have as many Apps to sell. They have lost out on the win-win ethic that Apple continues to display.

Thanks again for the write-up. I am in the process of working with two lawyers because of RIM’s lack of forsight.