The two day event Blackberry Developer Conference (BBDevCon) Asia took place at Suntec City Convention Centre sees more than 1000 sign ups, reflecting a strong interest from the community towards the BlackBerry Platform. BBDevCon was supposed to be held in Thailand but due to the flooding, it was relocated to Singapore. However, for the community in Thailand, BlackBerry promises that the next BBDevCon in 2012 will be held in Thailand.

At the BBDevCon, BlackBerry spokesperson Gregory Wade kicked off the event by mentioning that BlackBerry is dedicated to the Asia market, and that developer’s innovations are increasingly coming from Asia. “Asia represent Opportunities, Asia represents Growth”. With the reassurance of commitment towards the Asia Pacific market by BlackBerry, this spells good news for the developers community as well as the consumers here. What’s exciting about the keynote was that there were a few announcements made during the BBDevCon:

1. BlackBerry 10 – Next Generation BlackBerry Platform Powering Smartphones and Tablets.

The next generation BlackBerry platform will be called BlackBerry 10. For the Blackberry 10, an ecosystem consisting of three fundamental components will be set up: the BlackBerry Operating System itself, complemented by BlackBerry 10 services which includes the cloud services and the payment services, and most importantly, the BlackBerry Development Toolkit. For the BlackBerry Development Toolkit, BlackBerry makes it easy for developers to start developing and to download the toolkit without the need to register and that there are no fees needed, “and heck you don’t even need to prove that you are human!” - Alec Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystems Development

2. Comprehensive Support for BlackBerry Developers

Of course, the next announcement from Blackberry which would excite developers who are interested in developing on the Blackberry OS is that there are now comprehensive supports available for the abovementioned developers. To do that, BlackBerry is rolling out  a developer program called the BlackBerry Jam which connects developers with the Blackberry Partner Ecosystem. Under the BlackBerry Jam Initiative, there are the BlackBerry Jam Zone, BlackBerry Jam Market, BlackBerry Jam Community as well as the BlackBerry Jam Sessions. Each initiative helps make it easier for BlackBerry developers to get the support and knowledge they need to build on the OS. Perhaps the more exciting initiative would be the BlackBerry Jam Community which allows developers to connect to the active developer communities and forums to get advices as well as tutorials from experts and other developers. The source codes of the BlackBerry OS is also made open source and is available on the BlackBerry GitHub page. Under the BlackBerry Jam Sessions, regular BlackBerry Apps Hackathons will be held to facilitate idea exchanges and meetups with other BlackBerry developers. During the BBDevCon, Alec Saunders too welcomes anyone to send him emails (at his email alec.saunders@rim.com) if you have any enquiries with regards to the BlackBerry Developer Program.

3. Sexy UI Cascades now part of BlackBerry Native SDK

Cascades is the user interface (“UI”) framework that TAT (The Astonishing Tribe), the company that RIM acquired, has been using for many years to create numerous advanced UIs and applications. With the acquisition, the Cascades UI will be integrated and is now part of the BlackBerry Native SDK. The whole idea of this integration into the SDK is that there are developers who are not designers, and this pre-packaged and pre-designed Cascades UI can be deployed into the applications directly by the developers.

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Of course, what this all also means for end users like you and me is that, there will be increasingly more apps made by developers in Asia, localized for the Asia market. With BlackBerry coming into the tablet and smartphone market fighting alongside with other existing players such as the iOS and Android, does BlackBerry has what it takes to capture the Asia market? We will just have to wait and see.

Notes worth mentioning:

1) There are 70 Million active BlackBerry subscribers today, with addition of 20 million over the past year.
2) Most users use apps, with Indonesian users downloading twice the amount of apps the average mobile user downloads.
3) BlackBerry App World has more paid app downloads than android and is the second most profitable app store after Apple. AppWorld apps generate more revenue than Android market apps.
4) Last year alone, BlackBerry Messenger users grew from 28+ Million to 50+ Million users
5) There are over 50000+ apps on the BlackBerry App World