New opportunities from BlackBerry conference

“With the new services platform, we will help developers further monetize their applications and build breakthrough, highly responsive, location-aware applications for these smartphones,” said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM.

Advertising service

The new advertising service will enable developers to integrate advertising into their BlackBerry applications, helping them generate revenue and simplifying the business of mobile advertising. The service will feature ads compliant with the Mobile Marketing Association's (MMA) guidelines as well as rich media ads that will be able to integrate deeply with its applications.

Examples of this deep integration between ads and applications will include the ability to easily initiate a call from an ad, add a calendar entry or contact entry from an ad and directly link to an application in BlackBerry App World from an ad. The service and a software development kit (SDK) will be available in the first half of 2010.

Payment Service

A new payment service will present developers with new opportunities to monetize applications by selling digital content such as premium content, monthly or annual subscriptions and additional levels or upgrades for games and other entertainment applications from within their applications. It will also incorporate merchant services, including customer billing. This and an SDK are expected to be available in mid-2010.

Push service

The push service will be made generally available to registered developers in the first half of 2010. This allows developers and content providers to deliver time-sensitive alerts and up to 8 KB of data to applications.

Location services

Adding to the GPS capabilities already supported on the platform, the company will introduce three new location-based services for developers to build highly responsive, location-aware applications for smartphones. The three new location-based services include cell site geolocation, reverse geocoding and travel time.

Enhancements and themes

“We are making it easier than ever for developers, hobbyists and content providers to build graphic-rich experiences for smartphones,” added Alan Brenner, senior vice president, BlackBerry Platform at RIM. “These new features will help drive a multitude of engaging themes, games and applications for BlackBerry smartphone users.”

The enhancements include support for OpenGL ES for the development of 3D games and graphics; an upcoming Java GUI builder for the rapid development of user interfaces for applications; and the Theme Studio for the creation of themes for smartphones.

For more information and updates about the new services and features go to www.blackberry.com/developers. To download Theme Studio free go to www.blackberry.com/themestudio.