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BlackBerry 10 apps reveal the future of RIM's ecosystem

BlackBerry 10 apps reveal the future of RIM's ecosystem

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At the BlackBerry World keynote, RIM is currently giving its developer partners an unusually large portion of the spotlight to show off the apps they have built for BlackBerry 10, some in as little as ten days. The apps are designed to show a few things: how easy it is to port apps to BB10 from other platforms, how flexible RIM's developer tools are, and most importantly how the new Cascades framework gives developers a way to create apps that match the look and feel of BB10.

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PixelMag BlackBerry 10
PixelMag BlackBerry 10

At the BlackBerry World keynote, RIM is currently giving its developer partners an unusually large portion of the spotlight to show off the apps they have built for BlackBerry 10, some in as little as ten days. The apps are designed to show a few things: how easy it is to port apps to BB10 from other platforms, how flexible RIM's developer tools are, and most importantly how the new Cascades framework gives developers a way to create apps that match the look and feel of BB10.

We'll update this post live as we see the new apps that RIM's partners are trotting out, but if RIM's own press release is any guide, we should be seeing a list of traditionally loyal BlackBerry developers and a few new faces to the platform. Endomondo, Gameloft, Mippin, Occipital, PixelMags, Poynt, Truphone, and Wikitude were all given a chance to tout their support of BB10 in RIM's release, so we wouldn't be surprised to see any or all of them on stage today.

For starters, Jonas Norberg from Pacemaker showed a video of a new DJ / mixing app for the PlayBook — there was no live demo on hand, but attendees will be able to try the beta tomorrow. Norberg said that Pacemaker chose QNX and the PlayBook because it was the only "real time OS" on the market.

Next up was Candemir Orsan from Occipital, with a demo of a 360 Panorama app that was loaded up on the BlackBerry Dev Alpha device. The app uses multiple sensors on a phone to create panoramic images, and from the demo it works as you'd expect. You can pan around the final image using the gyroscope, which sounds like a neat feature.

RIM also showed off some gaming functionality in BlackBerry 10 — Baudouin Corman from Gameloft came up onstage to say that Gameloft will be a "strong supporter" of RIM's new OS. Unfortunately there weren't any live demos, but a video showed off 11 of Gameloft's "best" coming to BlackBerry 10. This included the forthcoming N.O.V.A. 3, Shark Dash, The Oregon Trail, and Ice Age Village. Video was only shown for the first two games, and there's no word on what the other seven games will be. Michael Schade from Fishlabs also had some gaming software to show off — Galaxy On Fire 2 HD (previously available for iOS, Android, and on the Mac App Store) was reportedly ported over to the PlayBook in one day.

RIM then introduced new publishing partners from Pixelmags, which offers a delivery system for a wide variety of magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Elle, Vouge, and Wired. The company announced that it was bringing a newsstand app to BlackBerry 10 and would also offer 10 free minutes of reading every month. Pixelmags showed the new app off on the BlackBerry Dev Alpha device, and noted that consumers can also pay one price and get access to all magazines in the newsstand. Additionally, users can jump up to a higher-tier premium offer that lets users download magazines for offline reading.

Mippin, a longtime BlackBerry developer, came onstage next to announce it was building a BlackBerry app generator, a self-service app building tool. It currently supports BlackBerry 5 - 7 and the PlayBook, with BlackBerry 10 support being switched on soon. The final developer got a fancy video intro — Appcelerator, the creators of the Titanium platform for app creation. Accelerator was on hand to announce its cross-platform app creation kit will now supporting BlackBerry 10. Details were relatively scarce, but developers will have several options for building their BlackBerry 10 apps.

RIM VP Martyn Malilick wrapped things up, noting that he's been seeing a resurgence in support for BlackBerry aps, with 69 percent growth in Q1 2012 in AppWorld's apps; he also said that PlayBook apps grew 240 percent in one quarter. He also reiterated the fact that PlayBook apps should be easy to port to BlackBerry 10, saying that "PlayBook is the on-ramp to BlackBerry 10."

More in our BlackBerry World 2012 liveblog, going on right now!