BlackBerry is home to a vast ecosystem of applications through BlackBerry World. Rich, smooth, and fast 3D games are populating the central marketplace, BlackBerry World, every day - even for BlackBerry 7 devices and older. Functional apps are also available in a wide variety of categories, including finance, location, news, photography, health, audio, social, and plenty of others.

BlackBerry 10 apps are developed in a wide range of ways. For one, Android applications can be run on BlackBerry thanks to a dedicated runtime. Tech-savvy end-users can even sideload Android applications onto their BlackBerry 10 device. Popular middleware solutions such as Marmalade enable developers to bring their apps into BlackBerry 10 easily, while partnerships with major 3D engines such as Unity enables game developers to bring their creations to the platform. Those more familiar with CSS, JavaScript, and HTML 5 can produce apps through the BlackBerry WebWorks, plus the Cascades user interface tools can make apps very handsome with minimal effort. Of course, developers willing to go all-in with BlackBerry 10 can write apps in C++ within a familiar framework. The BlackBerry PlayBook has a separate selection in BlackBerry World, though developers can easily enough repackage their PlayBook apps for BB10.