RIM to launch new BlackBerry App Store

By Davey Winder
Wednesday, 22 October 2008 18:59

Mobility

Hot news coming out of the BlackBerry Developer Conference in Santa Clara, California: RIM plans to launch an all new, all singing and dancing, App Store for the CrackBerry... 

Apple really grabbed the attention of everyone involved in the mobile device market when it came up with the iPhone App Store even if things have not always gone as smoothly as users might have liked.

Then, just last month, we reported how Microsoft was looking to enter the App Store business with 'Skymarket' for Windows Mobile downloads early next year.

Now, pretty much inevitably, Research in Motion has announced at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in California that it has two major new 'distribution initiatives' for BlackBerry applications.

These take the shape of a new online application storefront plus a new 'on-device' application centre to provide consumers with easy discovery of and access to a wide range of BlackBerry apps. Those businesses with either BlackBerry Enterprise Server or Professional Software deployments will still control the applications that can be downloaded within the corporate infrastructure.

RIM tells me that the application storefront is scheduled for a March 2009 debut, but BlackBerry developers can start submitting stuff for inclusion as soon as December. The pricing model has also been confirmed, with developers being allowed to set their own prices.

Developers will retain some 80 percent of sales revenue, and it is expected that a deal will be in place with PayPal by the time things go live with regards to providing secure payment processing functionality.

Meanwhile, work continues between RIM and its carrier partners as far as the on-device application centre is concerned. It is expected that this will enable each individual carrier to provide a catalogue of applications in much the same way it does already for individual apps such as the Facebook client for example.

"Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion comments: "The new BlackBerry application storefront and BlackBerry application centers will further support the growing BlackBerry ecosystem and help bridge consumers with developers and carriers as more and more innovative and interesting applications arrive."