BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion (RIM), has launched a new initiative—BlackBerry apps by student entrepreneurs, through which the company would offer hands-on training to third and fourth-year engineering students.
"The initiative was recently kick-started in Tamil Nadu. Around 10 universities, including SRM, Madhurai Kamaraj and Vellore Institute of Technology, are participating. This is just a pilot project, and we are looking at extending this to more universities in the months to come," said Annie Mathew, head (alliances and developer relations), RIM India. Saying apps have been a strong focus for RIM, she said the BlackBerry App World currently had 26,000-odd registered developers from India, against 5,000 two years ago, with the applications numbering over 40,000.
"Of these, nearly 2,000 apps have been posted by Indian developers, specifically meant for the Indian market. More than 80 per cent of these developers do business on the BlackBerry platform," she said.
Companies like Hyderabad-based Vimukti Technologies, Global Outlook and Innominds are surviving solely on BlackBerry apps, while large companies like TCS, Infosys, MindTree and Mahindra Satyam have BlackBerry practices on the enterprise side, she added.
