Research In Motion (RIM) has set its sight on Kenya’s capital Nairobi for its developer conference named Blackberry 10 Mini Jam.
The meeting will train Kenyan developers on the new Blackberry platform and how to engineer mobile apps on it.
BlackBerry 10 will be the latest platform for the mobile handset. The Mini Jam is expected to diffuse the major influence of the Android and Symbian platforms in creating apps.
“The full-day event will provide insights about the BlackBerry 10 experience, architecture and tools to enable Kenyan developers to be among the growing list of partners around the world creating apps for the new platform,” the company said.
“The BlackBerry platform already provides significant opportunities for the developer community in Kenya. There is high demand for more tools and knowledge to create local services and apps, but also a strong desire to reach a global audience of millions of BlackBerry customers.” Waldi Wepener, Regional Director for East, West and Central Africa at RIM added.
RIM has been pushing for the release of Blackberry 10 into the market before the end of this year although some news sites put the release date as January 2013.
KnowYourMobile blog reports that the original release date for the BlackBerry10 was in the third quarter of this year.
A number of issues have however slowed down the progress, including “chipset delays and BES integration issues, to the political, with boardroom reshuffles and the exit of its two founding executives, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.”
In a study by Vision Mobile this year, Android seemed to be the favored operating system in Africa for mobile app deployment. In terms of average revenue, the report says that BlackBerry apps bring in more sales than any other platform.
Registration for the event is still open for developers, and the organizers say that there are little seats available. The event is scheduled for August 17 starting at 10am.
