The BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour Arrives in Cape Town Today

Fully booked event demonstrates excitement among SA developer community for BlackBerry 10

More than 250 developers have registered to attend the BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour event in Cape Town today at The Westin Grand, illustrating the high level of interest across the developer community in South Africa for creating apps for the forthcoming BlackBerry® 10 platform.

To date, the tour has come to key cities across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, bringing developers around the world the latest information about BlackBerry 10 and the opportunities the new platform offers for creating powerful apps.

RIM has transformed the developer experience with BlackBerry 10, creating an open platform to enable developers to leverage their range of existing skills, while at the same time providing them with powerful new tools to simplify the development process.

“It’s fantastic to see the level of excitement among developers for the BlackBerry 10 platform,” said Alexandra Zagury, Managing Director for South Africa and Southern Africa at BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion. “Whether developers choose to develop HTML5 apps or native apps, our environment will enable them to use their best skills to quickly create apps with great user experiences.”

Developers excited to create BlackBerry 10 apps 

There is already growing excitement among developers in South Africa.

Allan Wilson, Managing Director at Flat Rock Solutions said: “As an app development house with a focus on the enterprise we find that native app development is still often the best solution for the needs of our enterprise customers – so as a long standing BlackBerry partner we can’t wait to start using the new BlackBerry 10 SDK with Cascades to bring some additional flair to our native BlackBerry apps.  Having said that, where we do need to go cross-platform with HTML 5, BlackBerry WebWorks is going to help enormously in retaining the functionality of the BlackBerry native experience.”

Wim Morris, Managing Director at Polymorph Systems said: “We at Polymorph Systems are very excited to get our hands on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device for testing, and we look forward to meeting with other BlackBerry developers and learning more about the road ahead with BlackBerry 10.”

Pietman du Toit, Business Development, AfriGIS (Pty) Ltd. said: “We were impressed with seeing what BlackBerry 10 had to offer at the BlackBerry World conference earlier this year, and we are excited to have an even closer look at the platform and its capabilities at the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour sessions in Cape Town.  As AfriGIS has been developing native BlackBerry applications as part of our enterprise solutions and products since the third generation OS, we are eager to start utilising the updated UI features offered by Cascades in BlackBerry 10.  Continuing to enrich the user experience will help ensure that our BlackBerry-based solutions and applications remain attractive and cutting edge in the competitive smartphone arena.”

Gidon Judes, Managing Director of Cytrus Technology said: “Our team is really looking forward to attending the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour. With Cytrus’ focus being in the mobile space, we have predominately focused on native development and we look forward to moving into web-based applications and exploring new options with BlackBerry WebWorks. As BlackBerry holds a strong share of the South African market, we believe it’s key to attend this event.”

To help developers get started on the BlackBerry 10 platform, qualified developers attending the BlackBerry 10 Jam event in Cape Town, will receive a BlackBerry® 10 Dev Alpha device to test the apps they develop.*

Currently in beta, the BlackBerry 10 developer toolkit includes the BlackBerry® 10 Native SDK with Cascades, which allows developers to create graphically rich, high performance native applications in C/C++. The Native SDK for BlackBerry 10 has a rich set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that give developers access to core device features and a range of BlackBerry application services, such as Push and Payment services. Cascades is a powerful native application development toolset that allows developers to easily build visually stunning applications in C/C++ or QML without having to write complex, low-level graphics code. Earlier this month, RIM released an update of the BlackBerry 10 developer toolkits.

The toolkits are available in beta as free downloads from http://developer.blackberry.com

For more information on the Cape Town event, please visit http://www.blackberryjamworldtour.com/cape-town.

*Note: Qualified developers will be determined by RIM using applicant information from the registration system. If you have already received a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device at a previous BlackBerry developer event or from RIM, you are not eligible for this offer. Registrants who apply will be notified within 24 hours before the event if they are qualified to receive a device at BlackBerry 10 Jam. Qualified developers must collect their device in person at the World Tour event that they are registered for. Photo identification must be provided at the time of collection. Registrants cannot receive more than one (1) BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device during the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour.