Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

App makers should be required to make software for Blackberry
handsets, says the boss of the phone company.
In an open letter to members of the US Congress , John Chen said
rivals should be obliged to make their widely used apps available
on Blackberry handsets.
He said the other firms and developers were "discriminating"
against Blackberry by not making the apps.
His comments drew criticism from experts, one of whom called his
claims "ludicrous".
'Discriminatory practice'
In his letter, Mr Chen sought to expand the definition of "net
neutrality" to encompass more than just the way data travels to
peoples' homes.
Net neutrality is the principle that there should be no paid
prioritisation for net traffic. This means no company should be
able to gain a commercial advantage by paying ISPs to have its
data reach people faster.
Mr Chen said the same should apply to apps on smartphones, so
companies would be legally obliged to make versions of their
programs equally available for all handsets. The current situation
was discriminatory, said Mr Chen, because some app makers were
not making versions of popular apps for many phones, including
Blackberry devices.
As an example, he said, this "discrimination" meant Blackberry
users did not have a version of Apple's iMessage or Netflix's
streaming service available to them.
The actions of these discriminatory companies was creating a
"two-tiered" system in which users of some devices had access to
far more content and applications than others, he said.
"These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that
neutrality advocates have criticised at the carrier level," wrote Mr
Chen, adding that app makers should be "mandated" to cover
Blackberry and other platforms too.
App makers have to make hard commercial decisions about
whom they develop for, say analysts
The letter has received widespread criticism in the technology
world, with some saying Mr Chen's argument was "utterly
warped" .
Stuart Miles, founder of gadget news site Pocket-lint, said the call
to oblige others to make apps for Blackberry was "ludicrous" and
showed what little understanding Mr Chen had of the mobile world.
"He's asking someone that he does not pay, to work on their own
time to develop something for his platform that might have the
potential for making money but might well not," he said.
"If you have an enticing, exciting platform, that's when people will
start developing for you," said Mr Miles.
Martin Garner, senior analyst at market research firm CCS Insight,
said many developers had to make hard decisions about how to
use their limited resources when developing apps.
"As wearables, connected cars and smart TVs come into the
market, each with multiple operating systems, the number of
versions they may need to produce is growing," he said.
Mr Garner also questioned how such app regulation would work,
who would decide which developers were included and what
platforms were covered.
"Adding regulations to force them to support other operating
systems would not obviously improve the position,"