Former producer at Jogjakarta based Guava Games and CTO of Oneb1t Media Muhammad Sumyandityo Noor, better known as Didiet, has been appointed RIM’s developer relations/evangelist for Indonesia. His responsibilities essentially is getting Indonesia’s mobile developers on board RIM’s upcoming platform, the BlackBerry 10. While he remains a shareholder at Guava Games and Oneb1t Media, he no longer holds an active role in either company as he has resigned to take up the full time role at RIM.
BlackBerry applications development has seen some serious uptake in Indonesia despite the platform’s growth being savaged across the world by the ever expanding Android and iOS. Recent figures published by Gartner placed RIM seventh among global phone makers in terms of units sold with less than 10 million units in the first quarter of 2012. A year ago RIM sold over 13 million devices which means it saw a drop of over 25 percent in sales. Fortunately for RIM, Indonesian developers seem immune to such reports.
Sarim Aziz, RIM’s head of developer relations in Southeast Asia has been hard at work in getting Indonesian developers on board the BlackBerry platforms by running workshops across several cities over the last year in collaboration with several local developers. With Didiet Noor on board, his work would be much easier as Noor will be based in Jogja instead of Singapore, directly in touch with what is considered as one of the hotbeds of Indonesian mobile scene.
With interest in BlackBerry development falling to its lowest ever according to a recent report by Appcelerator and IDG, Indonesia may well be RIM’s savior in delivering apps to ensure that BlackBerry 10 remains a viable option for consumers.
