As widely expected, Research In Motion (RIM) today announced the launch of ‘BlackBerry App World,’ its rival to similar application stores from the likes of Apple and Google. In a statement, RIM said that the store will launch immediately in the US, the UK and Canada, with further country launches to follow. It adds that it expects around 1,000 applications to be made available on the store this week from a variety of brands including Bloomberg, Gameloft, the New York Times, Pandora, Lonely Planet and MTV, reflecting a mix of consumer and business interests. BlackBerry users are able to access applications by visiting the website. The service is designed to automatically present the relevant catalogue of applications available for a user’s specific BlackBerry model. It is compatible with BlackBerry smartphones with a trackball or touch screen running BlackBerry device software 4.2 or higher. It features a ‘front page carousel’ allowing several featured applications to be showcased on the home screen, keyword search, a ‘Top Downloads’ area and customer reviewing and recommendations functionality. Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO at RIM, is to showcase the store during his keynote this morning at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas.

BlackBerry App World is set to compete with Apple’s hugely-successful ‘App Store’ for the iPhone and iTouch, Google’s ‘Android Market,’ Nokia’s ‘Ovi’ and forthcoming application stores from Microsoft and Palm. However, co-chief executive Jim Balsillie confirmed in an interview with Reuters that RIM would offer developers an 80 percent revenue share for applications sold via its platform, a higher rate than that offered by rival stores. The rest of the revenue will be shared between RIM and the mobile operators. According to new statistics from T-Mobile USA this week, users of its Android-based G1 device have downloaded 40 applications each on average via Android Market to date. At last count, Apple has registered 800 million downloads from its App Store.