The advent and growing popularity of BlackBerry smartphones has changed how corporate users communicate whenever away from their offices. No longer tied to their landline phones, no longer glued to their desktop PCs, corporate users could stay in touch via voice and e-mail as long as cellphone reception was available. Then, Research In Motion (RIM) upped the ante: Independent software developers were allowed to create software to run on BlackBerry smartphones. Developers familiar with Java (the BlackBerry uses the Java programming language) could leverage that knowledge to create BlackBerry apps. This opened the BlackBerry smartphone to the creative power of developers all across the world.
In April 2009, RIM went one step further: The BlackBerry App World was introduced, offering developers a place to market, advertise, and sell their applications to all BlackBerry users.
BlackBerry Application Development For Dummies shows you how to develop an application from concept to completion, from coding to uploading it to the BlackBerry App World to sell it to BlackBerry users.
BlackBerry Application Development For Dummies is a guide to developing BlackBerry smartphone applications. No BlackBerry development experience is required, but familiarity with the Java programming language is assumed. After all, Java is the language you use to develop applications for BlackBerry smartphones, and all the API documentation follows the Java documentation guidelines as well as providing coding examples in Java.
The BlackBerry platform enables and encourages you to create minimalist applications that can do some pretty powerful and useful things. You can start small, making simple apps that do a few really important things for your users, and then over time, improve and increase the features and functionality that your apps deliver.