BlackBerry Deployment Strategies

Question

I'm new to large scale BB app deployment and I'm looking for some clarification on the various methods of deployment. Please bear with me as I'm sure there is more to it than my naive view would lead me to believe.

My app is very targeted to corporate users and requires a subscription to some additional services before it can be used. In other words, it's not targeted towards the consumer market, so I'm not worried about people not being able to easily find it online.

What do I need to be aware of when looking at deployment strategies? Any gotchas?

From my understanding my choices are:

- App World

• small upfront vendor fee
• users can easily search for and find my app
• billing handled by RIM
• 4 licensing models (static, single, pool, dynamic). Though I'm not sure I've seen enough info on the pool and dynamic to fully appreciate how it might help me.

- Download from my website

• billing is handled by me
• can I enforce the number of licenses that are in use within an organization?
• is this easier/harder for a user?

- What else am I missing?

   

EDIT: How do most people handle the provisioning of application license keys? (How do you tie an instance of the application to 1 device?)

Answer 1

I released my app before the BlackBerry App World existed, so here are some disorganized thoughts:

• I think App World might support an upgrade path for your application (i.e. notifying your users when you push an update to App World). You won't have that luxury if you host your own JAD files. I got around this problem by communicating with my server when the user logs in, but I really had no choice at the time.
• You can distribute your app to places like Handango, but I would probably only suggest that for an additional revenue stream. Since your app is free, there's probably no point.
• To enforce the number of licenses within an organization I think you might have to implement some client-server communication, but I could be wrong.
• I know that older BlackBerry handsets don't come with App World built in, so the user would have to download App World (which is hopefully easier nowadays, I know I had to load it via USB) and then download your app, as opposed clicking a link in the browser.

From the users' perspective I think what it comes down to is that the ones who have and use App World will obviously want to download your app that way. However, since you're targeting corporate users, they might not even have App World installed and now there's another hurdle to getting your app. In your case you're not really reaching a larger audience by putting it in the App World, so I think the main benefit would come from not having to roll your own upgrade notification system.

Answer 2

One alternative strategy (if you can do that with your app, it might require changes) would to make it available on app world and other stores for free, but tie it to the service you're hosting so before that app can be used, the user would have to pay on your site and then log in using credentials or an activation code you provide.

Generally, when I know what I want to download, I find it easier to simply point my BB browser to an OTA link instead of browsing through the (slow) App World app.

One thing you're probably missing is that there are other stores beside the official one from RIM, e.g. http://www.mobihand.com/. They have some nice features that might come in handy for you, for example you can provide a webservice URL that they send a request to whenever someone purchases your app (might be useful for the activation of your additional services). It's definitely worth a look.

MobiHand also has a new service that allows you to host some kind of shopping cart on your own site. Payment and everything else is handled by them, but it's better integrated in your own services then. It's also way less "expensive" for you, as they only charge about 5% (?) of your profits / app instead of 30% as if your app was sold on their main shop site.

One problem that I can think of when you provide the app as a download on your site is that you might want to add an update check function to your app. If you distribute your app through one of the app stores, users would get update notifications via mail or through App World when you upload a new version.

EDIT:

One thing that just came to my mind: If you're targeting whole companies (not only some corprate users), you might get in contact with their IT support. Bigger companies often have own BES servers and are able to (remotely) rollout apps on their employees BlackBerry devices.