[SureStoreX]

Please do not get me wrong, there many, many great apps/themes for the Blackberry, but there always seems to be a price tag on almost everything.
Coming from an iPhone, (albeit you needed to have Cydia) the community created apps/themes for the device and never charged a cent.

Don't say �go back to an iPhone", because after using a Blackberry, I don't think I could go back to Apple. I am just wondering out loud.
I frequent the Crackberry site quite often, and there are posts for new apps/themes (most are very nice), but then there is the price tag, and many people dismiss them solely because it has to be paid for.

If I am missing something, please pardon the ignorance, I am only going on what I see and hear from a few Blackberry users. They keep referring to the Apple community and plentitude for free apps and themes. Friends of mine that still have iPhones have well over 30 themes (no apps to factor in) downloaded; now if they had to pay 2-3 dollars a theme, I am pretty sure that number would be cut exponentially.

Is there a cultural difference between indie BB developers, and Apple developers? Is the developer base for Blackberry too small to make more free apps, or is the Apple developer base too big to charge for apps for fear of being passed over. I have no idea, which is why I wanted to hear from you all.

I am not trying to be an advocate of �All apps should be free", I have seen quite a few things I will be purchasing once the S2 comes to Bell (BerrySlider looks awesome, and deserves to be paid for), but it seems like Blackberry users pay much more.

[chunter222]

well it cost people time to make them and bascially time is money.

[FF22]

There are quite a few FREE items for the BB which work quite well. I have found more than a dozen themes that I've liked that were free and more that were too cute for my tastes that were also free. Capture-it takes screen shots for free and there are other free similar apps. CameraMute is free as are one or two other similar programs. BBSAK is a great desktop tool for backing up and exploring the phone. gpslogger is free and his Filescout is donation ware. BBnotepad is a text app. Keepass has both bb and desktop modules. There are 3 or 4 free weather apps. A few chronometers and clocks. Free tip calc. Blackstar geocaching. Iheartradio, slacker and pandora. Poynt, quickpull, etc.

Obviously that is not thousands but some quickies off the top of my head.

Then, I will agree, probably as a mainly (formerly??) business platform, developers probably feel folks can afford to pay for some of the apps they develop.

[anon(1365634)]

You also have to look at the volume.

If you want to make $100,000 on iPhone app, you only have to sell 100,000 apps at $0.99 each. There are so many iPhone users who is willing to spend $0.99. They are willing to buy iTunes songs, movies, etc. They pay for software upgrade, unlike Windows users. That's typical Apple users. They buy (don't steal) things.

For BB Apps, IMO, we don't have that 100,000 user base for that app. So the price tag will be much higher per unit. Also BB users are more like Windows users, in purchasing behavior.

[ElNino77]

The funny thing (to me) about this thread is that my perspective has been the exact opposite... that BlackBerry is the platform that has lots of great free software while on the iPhone/Touch you need to buy the apps you like.

To be honest, I've never used Apple's App Store so my thoughts about paid apps was based on what I heard about the apps firends/co-workers had bought for their iPhones, and my assumption was that most App Store apps were not free. As for the Themes... can you even change the theme on a non-jailbroken iPhone? I was under the impression that was one of the benefit of jailbreaking.

As for the BlackBerry platform, I have downloaded several dozen apps and themes for my BlackBerrys and every one of them has been free with the very recent exceptions of QuickLaunch and BerryBuzz. Everything else that I use on a daily basis was free, and that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.