Comments on: Developers: Should You Support Anything Lower Than OS 5?

By: Latest OS Breakdown Shows 5.0+ Constitutes 68% of All BlackBerrys in Circulation - IndonetAsia

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:57:30 +0000

[...] itsberry | Uncategorized | 1 min ago This breakdown by Eric at Ebscer shows OS 5.0+ makes up for 90% of purchases [...]

By: Latest OS Breakdown Shows 5.0+ Constitutes 68% of All BlackBerrys in Circulation | Red Blackberry

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:42:45 +0000

[...] This breakdown by Eric at Ebscer shows OS 5.0+ makes up for 90% of purchases [...]

By: Latest OS Breakdown Shows 5.0+ Constitutes 68% of All BlackBerrys in Circulation | Apple/Windows/Blackberry/Android

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:08:00 +0000

[...] This breakdown by Eric at Ebscer shows OS 5.0+ makes up for 90% of purchases [...]

By: Latest OS Breakdown Shows 5.0+ Constitutes 68% of All BlackBerrys in Circulation | 101 Best BlackBerry Apps

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 06:00:42 +0000

[...] This breakdown by Eric at Ebscer shows OS 5.0+ makes up for 90% of purchases [...]

By: Latest OS Breakdown Shows 5.0+ Constitutes 68% of All BlackBerrys in Circulation | BlackBerry Cool

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 19:22:38 +0000

[...] This breakdown by Eric at Ebscer shows OS 5.0+ makes up for 90% of purchases [...]

By: Jeff Bacon

Jeff Bacon — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 03:09:00 +0000

It is true that new device purchasers have a higher propensity to spend which distributes sales more heavily to newer devices and, hence, newer OSes. However there are still opportunities to monetize older devices, it’s a matter of deciding on your costs to support the older devices vs the revenue. If you’re supporting the 8500 series w QVGA resolution, unless you’re specifically needing the newer APIs (not just using them because they’re there) then adding support for the other QVGA devices is not hard (basically trivial).

However, since App World did not ship on most of the 4.x OSes, there may still be only a small market for those platforms on App World. RIM could enhance the sales of apps to those devices by having platform/OS specific features rather than one (or a couple) master feature list(s) but that’s kinda not in their own best interests as they want people to upgrade their old devices =).

By: Jeff Bacon

Jeff Bacon — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 03:03:00 +0000

There’s a lot of opportunity that developers are missing by exclusively distributing through AppWorld… like accessing some of those older devices for one, but also just generally accessing a larger number of BlackBerry users. BPlay, AT&T, etc. all have users that see featured items there and purchase vs the limited featured slots on App World.

By: FileScout Releases Data on Downloads and Purchases by OS | 101 Best BlackBerry Apps

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:48:10 +0000

[...] had some great feedback on our post talking about whether it makes sense to develop your app for any pre-OS 5…. Matthias of emacberry.com and developer of FileScout was kind enough to share some data and add to [...]

By: Eric at Ebscer

Eric at Ebscer — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:38:00 +0000

Version 1.0 of AppWorld supported all the way back to OS 4.2 I believe, while version 2.0 limited support to OS 4.5+ A much bigger difference is probably the fact that AppWorld was not preinstalled on most of those devices. For example I have been surprised by the very small number of 8330 users I have seen given the immense popularity that device has at one time.

Personally given that I only sell through AppWorld, any distinction between AppWorld users and BlackBerry users in general isn’t relevant to me.

By: BlackBerry News From The Wire for the week of 4/4/2011

BlackBerry News From The Wire for the week of 4/4/2011 — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:53:09 +0000

[...] a follow up to last week’s graph, which showed that OS 6 was only on 10 percent of devices, Kyle from BlackBerry Cool shows us that 41 percent of paid apps from App World are for OS 6. So the active usage is [...]

By: FileScout Releases Data on Downloads and Purchases by OS | BlackBerry Cool

FileScout Releases Data on Downloads and Purchases by OS | BlackBerry Cool — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:31:00 +0000

[...] View Comments The above graph shows downloads of FileScout for 45,000+ users based on OSWe had some great feedback on our post talking about whether it makes sense to develop your app for any pre-OS 5…. Matthias of emacberry.com and developer of FileScout was kind enough to share some data and add to [...]

By: BlackBerry News From The Wire for the week of 4/4/2011 | Wireless World Of Ramsey

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:26:49 +0000

By: Matthias Marquardt

Matthias Marquardt — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:16:00 +0000

few moments ago I have checked my stats in detail – OMG! – I am a jerk!

By: Kyle McInnes

Kyle McInnes — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 18:14:00 +0000

There’s a very likely correlation with device and application spending. I seem to recall reading an article about how BlackBerry Storm users buy the most apps relative to other BlackBerry devices (pre-OS 6 days). Can’t find the link though.

By: BlackBerry News From The Wire for the week of 4/4/2011 | BBGeeks

BlackBerry News From The Wire for the week of 4/4/2011 | BBGeeks — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 18:01:54 +0000

By: Eric at Ebscer

Eric at Ebscer — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:56:00 +0000

This makes the math is more complicated, but in general I think that the principle still stands. By looking at just a single application over time you can account for this some, and I’ve been seeing use of 4.6.X continue to drop, and use of of 4.7.X go to almost zero.

Additionally I think there is also an argument in here related to people with money to spend on new devices having money to spend on applications.

By: Matthias Marquardt

Matthias Marquardt — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Supporting OS 4.3 – 6.0 for most of my Apps – the AppWorld stats are not really representative IMHO – since AppWorld itself did support all the older OS – if if the support came quite late (if at all)… Plenty of my coworkers have Blackberry devices with OS 4.5 or less…

Concerning the FileScout users I have different stats… IMHO this is just another try to push developers to OS5 & OS6 only Develpment… -> might be that I am just following the “last men standing” strategy here…

By: Jeff Bacon

Jeff Bacon — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:38:00 +0000

The missing piece of data there is what percentage of apps on App World support devices with older OSes? If 90% of paid apps don’t offer support for < OS 5, then obviously the paid download rate for < OS 5 devices can't be more than 10%. If most apps support OS 4.5+ then this is more relevant as a deciding factor in your OS support. Also, what's the rate for free apps as there's lots of revenue that can be generated via ads or in-app purchasing which may or may not be accounted for in the referenced stats.

By: Kyle McInnes

Kyle McInnes — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Funny you say that because Blockade supports the 8100.

By: Jerome Carty

Jerome Carty — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:31:00 +0000

Dump anything lower than OS 5. If we continue to support it, it only keeps the older devices around a lot longer.

I understand the potential to reach those on older devices. However, do most of them even know they can download apps?