14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is gearing up for the launch of BlackBerry App World 3.0
beta, and has just announced a new important milestone that its application store reached, namely 1 billion downloads.
RIM's storefront was launched more than two years ago, and is already enjoying availability in a number of more than 100 countries around the world, as well as an increased number of downloads each and every day.
“The BlackBerry App World storefront launched a little over two years ago, and over that time, we’ve made many feature improvements, enhanced the look and feel, and added a ton of compelling apps,” a recent post on the company's blog reads.
“BlackBerry App World is now in over 100 countries, seeing an average of 3 million downloads per day, and we recently crossed the 1 billion app download milestone!”
Just as any other application portal out there, the BlackBerry App World too includes highly popular applications, with BeBuzz and BeWeather from Bellshare GmbH being two such examples.
The company's free applications versions managed to top 10 million downloads to date, and RIM also notes that Bellshare GmbH reached $1 million dollars in sales through BlackBerry App World.
Doodle Blast, by BlackMoon Design is another popular application, available only on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet PC. In three months of availability, it surpassed 40,000 downloads.
When it comes to gaming, EA Games is the most popular platform in the Blackberry App World, RIM notes.
Bejeweled, TETRIS, SCRABBLE, MONOPOLY: HERE & NOW, YAHTZEE Adventures, The Sims 3, THE GAME OF LIFE, MONOPOLY, The Simpsons Arcade, SimCity Deluxe are some of the titles available on BlackBerry, along with Need for Speed, pre-loaded on the BlackBerry PlayBook.
Other apps that are worth mentioning include Jingu, based on the BlackBerry Messenger platform, enabling users to create an avatar, upload emoticons and chat, as well as the 180 Super Apps that came from Polar Mobile, like Globe Life and Rogers SPORTSNET Mobile, or CNN Money and CBS Sports.
And there is also ScoreMobile, a popular sports app in BlackBerry App World, built from the ground up for the BlackBerry smartphones.
“This app provides up-to-the-minute sports scores, boxscores, player stats, betting odds, game previews, recaps, top stories, and league standings. In addition they even publish exclusive live blogs for key games and allow you to track live games with push alerts,” RIM explains.
Also, RIM notes that they started moving to BlackBerry App World 3.0, and that the launch of Vendor Portal 3.0 was the first step in this direction. The new portal version will be launched in July in beta, and should taste further enhancements in the near future.