Sales of BlackBerry smartphones are down 25 percent this year, and RIM’s poor app store is getting a lot of the blame. “It’s horrible,” says Terry Hughes of developer Widality. “We couldn’t make enough money to grow organically,” despite having one of the BlackBerry’s most popular apps.
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To change that reputation, RIM will roll out a number of new application development tools and services in the next few weeks. For example, developers will soon be able to charge subscription fees, add in-app purchases, join a new RIM ad network and/or use a new analytics service.
