RIM opens software store for BlackBerry

Unlike the iPhone application store of rival Apple Inc,which offers 70 per cent of revenue from each piece of software to the developer,RIM plans to offer 80 per cent.

The rest of the revenue will be shared between RIM and wireless carriers,co-chief executive Jim Balsillie said in an interview. “We think that’s a fair distribution of the economics,” he said.

The company’s media-rich BlackBerry smartphones,such as the Pearl,Curve,Storm and Bold models,compete with Apple’s iPhone for retail customers.

Ontario-based RIM has pushed aggressively to diversify its user base beyond executives,lawyers,politicians and other professionals who use BlackBerrys to send wireless e-mail.

“I think we’ve firmly cut over to the broader consumer marketplace,” Balsillie said.

Offering a slate of interesting and diverse smartphone software,from the practical to the entertaining,can sometimes mean the difference between keeping and losing a user — someone who has spent money on such software may be reluctant to switch to a different device and have to pay all over again.

RIM first announced its plan to enter the increasingly crowded market for mobile software supermarkets last year.

Microsoft Corp is also working on a mobile phone software marketplace and has signed up partners such as Web music service Pandora,game publisher Electronic Arts,and social networking site Facebook.

Separately on Wednesday,Nokia,the world’s biggest mobile phone maker,said on “thousands” of developers and content providers had registered to sell content in its Ovi online store,which will be opened in early May.

Microsoft and Nokia plan to offer 70 per cent of application revenue to software developers.