The BlackBerry family of devices has long been the undisputed king of e-mail for business professionals. In recent years, the company that makes BlackBerry handhelds, Research In Motion (RIM), has been making devices targeted more towards consumers with devices such as the Storm and Pearl. Because of this shift the demand for quality applications has exploded in recent years. The creation of the BlackBerry App World has only fueled this growth and the size of the opportunity. According to recent statistics, the BlackBerry App World has the fewest number of titles and the highest average cost, all of which means there is a big opportunity here!
Now, with more than 28 million subscribers and 60 million devices manufactured, it is hard to go anywhere and not see someone using a BlackBerry. Maybe you see these numbers as a fertile market for your application, or maybe your company has long ago standardized on BlackBerry handhelds and you want to leverage that existing investment. Either way, you will learn how to tap into that potential and create custom applications for BlackBerry handhelds by using the object-oriented development experience you already have.
In this chapter, we shall:
Learn about the two approaches to application development
Learn generally what features can be used by an application
Understand how the SDK version relates to target devices
Learn about the BlackBerry Developer Zone
So let's get on with it...