Another BlackBerry 10 developer program is being dropped by BlackBerry as the company are to close the Built for BlackBerry Program on February 29.
With their focus on enterprise customers, BlackBerry state that they are evolving their app strategy to focus on secure enterprise apps leveraging BES and Good.
This is what it means for BlackBerry developers:
- Starting now, new Built for BlackBerry submissions will no longer be accepted
- Pending Built for BlackBerry submissions will no longer be reviewed
- Existing Built for BlackBerry apps will keep their designation until February 29, 2016
It should be highlighted that no app will be removed from BlackBerry World.  All that is happening is that the Built for BlackBerry designation will disappear.
BlackBerry developers can still reach out to the BFB Testing Team to nominate their app to be featured on BlackBerry World.
The Built for BlackBerry program was another one of those developer programs that BlackBerry created that quite simply didn’t work.  The Built for BlackBerry designation was supposed to signify to customers that a BlackBerry 10 app or game delivered the signature BlackBerry 10 experience and had passed an added level of evaluation.
In the end, what we ended up with was a program that rejected excellent apps, and approved others that I can only politely call as “questionable”.  There seemed to be no pattern or logic applied to the system and many BlackBerry 10 developers were left scratching their head wondering why a particluar app had been declined the status.
Personally, I don’t think the program will be missed but it is just another indicator of where BlackBerry 10 is heading.
