New Years Purging

A few years back, I decided to satisfy the somewhat frequent requests to provide a Blackberry version of the iHunter. As F&W and many other organizations were still standardized on Blackberry, and it was fairly popular in some provinces, it seemed like a reasonable step.

From a development standpoint, I am happy I did it. I re-worked the entire Android app, vastly improving the code base, in order to re-use large portions for the BB version. I learned some new technologies, grew as a developer, and enjoyed the work. I also made some users happy – for a while at least.

From a business perspective, it was not a great move. BB has been in steady decline, and their market share has reached near-zero for their non-Android phones. The sales have been dismal, and the technology stagnated to a point that I couldn’t really add features (or it didn’t make sense to).

Although the apps will continue to work for a while yet for any existing users, I have removed all Blackberry apps from sale on Blackberry World as of today. My apologies if you are still using a Blackberry device and want the app, but the cost to support and maintain them is too high, and I need to focus on providing improved products for the devices most people use.

Expect big improvements for both iOS and Android this year.

Mark