RIM hit back at reports that developer support for its BlackBerry platform is on-the-slide, with Alec Saunders, the company’s VP of developer relations, stating that “the numbers in the report do not gel with what we’re seeing in the real world”.

According to a Baird Equity Research report cited by AllThingsD, developer sentiment toward both the anticipated BlackBerry 10 platform as well as the current BlackBerry 7 OS are at a “new low”, stating that “31 percent of sampled BlackBerry 10 developers said they have shifted some or all of their work away from BB10”. The future for BlackBerry 7 was perceived as only slightly brighter than for Samsung’s bada, and behind Adobe’s Flash/AIR.

According to the Baird report: “We believe that many developers who planned to jump ship have already made the move, leaving a BlackBerry developer base that is smaller but increasingly loyal.”

In a blog post, RIM’s Saunders argued that in contrast, the BlackBerry App World vendor base has grown by 157 percent in the last year, with the company recently passing the 3 billion download milestone. He also said that its BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour was oversold in “almost every city”, with the company meeting almost 5,000 developers.

“The other thing I hear consistently is that RIM simply treats developers better than anyone else in the mobile industry”, Saunders said.