BlackBerry puts the focus on apps

Forget battery life, screen resolution or encryption measures, the most important announcement at Wednesday's BlackBerry 10 launch was that the company already has 70,000 apps in its ecosystem, including many of the top 1000.

The BlackBerry 10 operating system may be impressive and pack a host of excellent features, and the first handsets to run it -- the Z10 and Q10 -- may be extremely well made and aesthetically pleasing, but the truth is that design and functionality pale into insignificance compared with apps.

When BlackBerry's VP of Global Alliances and Business Development, Martyn Mallick, took to the stage, he said: "Yes, we have Skype committed to BlackBerry 10. And yes, we have Amazon Kindle committed to BlackBerry 10. And yes, we have WhatsApp committed to BlackBerry 10. We have SAP committed to BlackBerry 10. And yes, we have Angry Birds committed to BlackBerry 10...We have over 1,000 of those top applications from around the world committed to BlackBerry 10."

If a mobile platform can't offer at least the top 10-50 apps that Apple and Android users take for granted, then it is not going to win many customers. Phonemakers currently seem to be obsessed with screen size and quad-core processors, yet most smartphone users seem to be obsessed by Temple Run 2, Google Maps, the new video call feature in the Facebook app or the TV remote control function in the latest Android YouTube app.

Yet, despite BlackBerry's success in courting the world's leading app developers, there are two glaring omissions in the company's BlackBerry World app store: Instagram and Netflix. However, according to AllThingsD, an unnamed BlackBerry spokesperson has confirmed that the company is "in talks" with both but could not confirm when BlackBerry specific versions of the apps would be available.