If you look up the term ‘ecosystem’ in the Collins Dictionary (hint: It’s located a few pages after ‘BBM ™’ for BlackBerry ® Messenger), you will find it defined as:

“A system made up of a community of animals, plants, and bacteria interrelated together with its physical and chemical environment”

We hear this term used often regarding mobile devices, but instead of plants and animals, we talk about apps, media, customers, and developers. To further the analogy, the physical and chemical environments referred to in the definition are simply the BlackBerry ® Operating System (OS) and BlackBerry ® smartphones themselves.

Being strong in all of these areas builds a great mobile ecosystem. Right now, we are working to take the wonderful ecosystem we already have to BlackBerry® 10, and continue to grow it. How? By building an experience which doesn’t just rely on great devices or gobs of average apps, but one that supports developers, assists users, and brings killer apps. While making sure that all three interact well with the OS itself.

All this talk about animals and plants has me thinking that a few levels of Plants vs. Zombies are in order. What does a mobile “ecosystem” mean to you, and what parts do you feel it includes? Have your say in the comments below.