RIM (Research in Motion ) opens software store for BlackBerry

Research In Motion has launched an online store selling entertainment, games, news, and travel applications to its BlackBerry users.

RIM said on Wednesday its online store was immediately available to BlackBerry owners in Britain, Canada, and the United States.

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.