RIM to open apps store, and Handango turns to Android

This year has been full of buzz around vendor software stores, such as Apple App Store and Google’s planned Android Market, which aim to promote a certain platform to users and developers. Now RIM is joining the race, with plans for a BlackBerry Application Center, but it will enter a crowded space. Some operators, like T-Mobile, are beefing up their own stores, aiming to regain the initiative by offering apps for any operating systems and devices they support. But the multiplatform store is already a well established reality, and could provide another valuable channel for developers. The interesting question is whether the likes of Apple will see them as a useful way to expand the market, or a rival to their own brands and revenue split arrangements.

RIM trades heavily on its long experience in supporting personalized apps that are tightly integrated with the handset (unfashionable in the open access era perhaps, but delivering a strong user experience, plus being highly efficient for the carrier network). Following the success of the integrated BlackBerry FaceBook app, which has been downloaded 2.5m times in the past year, RIM is taking a similar approach with fellow social networking giant MySpace, with Microsoft Live Search, ticketing service TicketMaster, and the TiVO digital video recorder system (allowing the BlackBerry to act as a remote control and for TV programming to be pushed to the user over the cellular network).

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie claimed recently that the company’s its experience with push email puts it in an ideal position to deliver more consumer-focused, web 2.0 services that rely on personalization and are driven by events or location, rather than browser-based. Talking of social networking, Balsillie said: “It is remarkable when this is in a push, connected, event-driven basis. When you change your access to information, you change your relationship to it - not incrementally but on a quantum basis. These changes are tremendously exciting.”

So it is logical that RIM’s next move would be to open a software store, and the company this week confirmed leaks that it was readying a BlackBerry Application Center to run on the Storm, with its updated operating system, BlackBerry 4.7. This will enable users to discover, browse and install third party BlackBerry apps hosted by mobile operators, serving as the primary interface between the consumer and the carrier’s directory of downloadable software. This highlights a significant difference between RIM’s approach and Apple’s - while Apple retains full control of the store, and insists on the upper hand in carrier relationships (an upper hand it will only retain if its devices keep driving ARPU and customer acquisition), RIM is pursuing its traditional path of being the carrier’s friend, optimizing its handsets and now its store to boost the cellco’s own business model. The new Application Center should make it easier for RIM users to access and download software, stimulating data usage, but this will remain entirely within the carrier’s emvironment. The Center promises one-click, browser-based installation andusers will only see applications available for their specific device model and OS version, with full descriptions and alerts when updates become available. Carriers will assume responsibility for hosting application data and sending updates to a RIM-hosted server back end - an approach also favored by Nokia, in its bid to get carriers on the side of its software and web services strategy.

The rising resentment of the controlling approach of Apple (and, operators fear, Nokia, once it gets more established in software) should boost the multiplatform download stores. One of the strongest of these, Handango, will start to offer Android apps from November. This will complement Android Market, at least in the early stages, when Google’s own store will not support paid software.

Handango believes it can attract Android developers and consumers. “We have many loyal customers that we expect will want to try the Android device but are comfortable purchasing from Handango,” said CEO Bill Stone in an interview. “What is interesting and exciting for us is that we can offer customers and developers the choice of free and paid applications at launch as well as the ability to purchase them via the web and then download to their device.”

The company’s first partner is games publisher EA Mobile, which has said it will stay away from Android Market until it can charge for software.

Within Handango, members can add Android apps directly to their developer accounts and choose to distribute them in any of three ways - give them away for free; sell for a one-time purchase fee; or set up a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription fee.

Google has given no date for including paid content in Android Market, though it has said that it would not take a revenue cut, as its main goal is to stimulate uptake of Android devices, and it wants to differentiate from Apple, which takes a 30% share of revenues generated through App Store.

Meanwhile, other third parties are trying to cash in on the vogue for device-driven applications stores. Last month, mobile content provider MobiHand announced a partnership with RIM enthusiast site CrackBerry.com to launch their own on-device storefront for the BlackBerry line. The digital retail portal enables consumers to browse and search thousands of applications optimized for their particular RIM device, and will integrate with the BlackBerry Wallet m-commerce service for purchasing.