Yesterday CrackBerry posted a review of Xploding Boxes, and the first comment asked why the Bold 9000 was not supported. The reason that the 9000 is not yet supported is because as a developer this model is simply not a priority.

The Bold 9000 is one of the most loved BlackBerry models, but is almost 3 years old at this point. As such it now accounts for less then 2% of all BlackBerrys on the market (down from 5% last summer). Furthermore for many newer applications (like Xploding Boxes) a minimum OS of 5.0 is required while only 43% of Bold 9000 users have upgraded past OS 4.6 which leaves the potential market share even lower.

Neither does it just happen to be supported as it has a screen that is only 320 pixels tall, making development for it almost always a special case compared to the 360 pixels that the 8900, 9630, 9650, 9700, and 9780 all have. Even the smaller BlackBerry Curves are an easier case to handle as their smaller resolution is exactly two thirds the resolution, which at least makes the math simple.

All of this adds up to the Bold 9000 being a model that developers can no longer afford to view as being a high priority. Not that it won’t ever be supported, but that it isn’t always worth the effort.