RIM boss Thorstein Heins has talked up the company’s planned app offering for its new BlackBerry 10 platform, claiming the firm is taking a localised approach and focusing on quality rather than quantity.

"The tactic we are deploying is by country and by region. We are aiming to have the most important 200 to 400 apps available, because many applications are regional and they really do have a regional flavour," Heins said in an interview with Reuters.

Heins pointed to RIM’s recent events with developers across the globe as evidence of this strategy. "We've done 30 jam conferences in various cities all around the world, to get the bucket filled with meaningful local apps and not just a huge bunch of applications that you collect and throw at your audience," he said. "It is a very, very targeted approach."

With the BlackBerry 10 platform set for launch January 30 next year, RIM’s app offering will remain far behind that of app stores from the likes of Apple and Google, which both house over 700,000 apps. Heins, however, claimed this is not the best measurement of success.

"In my view it is really short-sighted to say, you have 600,000, you have 400,000 and you only have 100,000 apps, so you are not good," he said. "Look at how many actually get downloaded. … BlackBerry App World today is still the most profitable portal for application developers – it has the highest number of paid-for downloads."

The Reuters report claims RIM is aiming to have around 100,000 apps available at the launch of BlackBerry 10, which would be a record for any new platform.

Heins added that BlackBerry 10 will offer both the most popular applications in the market (such as social networks LinkedIn, Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook, and games from Gameloft) as well as business-focused apps such as Cisco WebEx and SAP.