RIM’s co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis said that there’s great potential in building and designing applications for the BlackBerry platform. In particular, they are interested in apps that blend data from several sources, such as an advanced calendar that would notify a user of traffic congestion or other problems that would affect their ability to make it to a meeting on time. Ideas like those will be a key driver of growth in BlackBerry sales going forward, Lazaridis and Balsillie told Reuters (NYSE: TRI).
RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) launched its app store in April, but it has yet to gain much traction. In a report released by Millennial Media and Mobclix, RIM was estimated to have 3,100 applications, compared to Apple’s catalog of 115,000 and Google’s stockpile of 13,000. BlackBerry users also downloaded fewer apps. The report found that BlackBerry users download about 300,000 a month vs. Android users, who download 20 million, and iPhone users, who download 100 million.
RIM is working on improving the experience for developers, including the ability to integrate advertising into free apps, and the ability to integrate with carrier billing, rather than relying on PayPal.
While BlackBerry is coming from behind on the application front, it still dominates the smartphone market. BlackBerry represents the second-largest smartphone platform after Nokia (NYSE: NOK) worldwide. In Q3, Gartner said Research In Motion

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