BlackBerry Getting Its Own App Store Soon
If you are a BlackBerry user, and you have been green with envy about your friends’ sexy iPhones and awesome 3rd party apps from the App Store, your envious days may soon be over.
Research In Motion has started accepting application submissions from developers to their Application Storefront and Application Center. The Application Storefront is the online web app for getting BlackBerry software; the Application Center is the on-device equivalent. RIM has said that they will in March this year.
Like the iPhone App Store, RIM’s offering will also have a certification process. Only after RIM’s review will apps be posted for download. Like the App Store, developers will retain 80% of the revenue generated from their applications. But RIM will supporting a broader range of revenue models, including subscription-based and try-and-buy models, both are not available on the iPhone App Store today. Android Market only supports free apps at the moment, but is expected to start supporting paid apps Q1 of 2009.
Well, looks like mobile application developers have more incentives to target Blackberry devices now, and end users will benefit from the slew of apps that are going to flow through RIM’s app store. That’s what we call a win-win situation.
