BlackBerry App World Reaches 15,000 Apps

RIM's BlackBerry App World has grown at a drastically slower rate than its Apple- and Google-run competitors. The store launched in March 2009 and reached the 10,000 app mark in early September of this year. The good news is, App World added 5,000 apps in the last 13 or 14 weeks.

Via its official Twitter account, RIM confirmed that there are now 15,000 applications for download available to BlackBerry users. That's another major milestone for the Canada-based smartphone maker, but it still falls impossibly short of the competition.

Apple's iPhone App Store has over 300,000 applications available, and the Android Market boasts about 100,000. RIM is doing much better than Palm and Microsoft, though, who offer 5,000 and 3,000 apps to their respective smartphone platforms.

RIM hasn't said anything about the number of downloads from the App World, nor how many developers are participating in App World. RIM has noted, however, that more developers appear to be interested in App World now that it supports carrier billing and credit card payments. App World has also been refreshed with easier navigation and discovery, and new tools allow BlackBerry users to more easily transition apps from one handset to another.

RIM's QNX and Flash-based PlayBook has also stirred developer interest. The PlayBook is said to launch in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2011. Hopefully both of these signal a soon-to-come surge in the number of apps available to the BlackBerry platform.

Nokia's Ovi App Store experiences close to 3 million app downloads per day. Further, Nokia has signed up 400,000 new developers in the past 12 months alone, with 92 developers each topping the 1 million download mark.

With app stores supporting iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, and even feature phones, there's plenty of opportunity for developers.