Stefan Mileschin

While much of the world has written off RIM, the mobile phone maker might actually make a comeback at the end of January.

The company is about to release its much delayed Blackberry 10 which theoretically should be long out-of-date, but sneak previews suggest it is pretty good.

Crucial to the launch is an app store which is populated with software which businesses can use. Observers thought that RIM would have a great deal of difficulty attracting developers for a product that many suspected would tank.

However, it's starting to look like the BlackBerry store will be well stocked with a respectable number of apps when Research In Motion launches BlackBerry 10.

The company held an event over the weekend where it offered app developers incentives to port their programs to the BlackBerry 10 platform and managed to attract a respectable 15,000 app submissions.

Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations at RIM, in a Twitter message said that in just 37.5 hours in RIM had 15,000 apps. He said he felt like he had run in a marathon.

One part of the "port-a-thon" event was aimed at Android developers and the other at apps written in other platforms, including Appcelerator, Maramalade, Sencha, jQuery, PhoneGap and Qt.

RIM offered $100 for each app ported and subsequently approved for sale in the BlackBerry 10 app store, up to certain limits. Developers could also win BlackBerry 10 development handsets and a trip to RIM's BlackBerry Jam Europe developer event.

Towards the end of last year, RIM had good news from the US government. It suggested that it liked the security that the new phone and operating system would have. This would put it in a strong position against rivals Apple and Google when it comes to top secret contracts.

While we never underestimate RIM's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it might be that the company really is able to pull its nadgers out of the fire after all.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/rim-m...-from-the-dead