Research In Motion is getting ready to launch its application portal. Called BlackBerry App World, it will be available in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Coming soon! Find tons of great applications designed for your BlackBerry smartphone in one convenient place – BlackBerry App World. Personalize your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more. Message your best friend, track the stock market, or channel your inner rock god. Sign up for BlackBerry App World today and discover how to put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone.
RIM also unveiled its pricing strategy. It will carry free applications but the first paid tier starts at US$2.99. RIM is probably hoping to weed out a few of the less useful applications (I’m trying to be kind) that can be found on the Apple App Store at US$0.99.
There are a few requirements that may leave older BlackBerry users out in the cold. You will need to be running BlackBerry smartphone operating system 4.2 or higher and your BlackBerry needs to be equipped with a trackball or SurePress touch screen. Another limitation is that applications will need to be installed in main memory and installation on external cards will not work.
At launch, BlackBerry App World will only accept PayPal as a payment method. I suspect that this will displease more than one customer so hopefully other payment methods will follow soon.