March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Research In Motion Ltd. will open an online applications store for its BlackBerry phones within a month, intensifying competition with Apple Inc. for consumers.

The site, known as BlackBerry App World, will begin offering games, networking software and music applications by then, spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy said. RIM said earlier that the store would open in March.

RIM is making consumer-friendly programs more accessible as it moves beyond corporate users -- the bulk of its customer base. The world’s biggest banks and securities firms have cut more than 260,000 jobs since July 2007 to cope with a deepening economic slump, triggered by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.

“More and more what makes a successful device is not just the hardware but the software,” said Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner Inc. analyst in London. “People are asking, ‘What are you going to do for me beyond the actual device to make it more interesting?’”

RIM may unveil the store April 1 at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, where RIM co-Chief Executive Officer Mike Lazaridis is giving a speech, according to Milanesi. Kennedy declined to comment on whether the store will debut at the conference, saying only that it will be available within a month. Users also will be able to download applications for a fee through EBay Inc.’s Paypal site.

RIM advanced $1.16 to $40.12 at 1:47 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares had dropped 58 percent in the past year before today.

Outpacing Industry

Sales growth of smart phones -- handsets with Web and e- mail functions -- will slow to 8.9 percent this year, one-third the pace of 2008, according to IDC. Still, the segment will perform better than the total mobile-phone market, which will shrink for the first time since 2001, the Framingham, Massachusetts-based research firm said.

Consumers are spending less as the recession deepens, with the World Bank predicting the global economy may shrink for the first time since World War II.

Sales of the Storm, RIM’s only touch-screen phone, picked up in January, according to Avian Securities. Early negative reviews and software glitches may have hurt demand when the device debuted in November. The software problems have since been fixed.

The Storm was the third-best-selling smart-phone in the U.S. in January, behind the BlackBerry Curve and Apple’s iPhone, according to an Avian survey of retail stores.

Apple’s App Store, which opened in July, has more than 15,000 applications. The company gets a 30 percent cut of each iPhone program sold, with developers getting a 70 percent share. Microsoft Corp. also plans to open an application store this year for its Windows Mobile software.

BlackBerry App World will have to find the right formula to appeal to consumers, said Milanesi.

“Whether it’s successful is all down to the number of applications, the pricing and how easy it is to find stuff,” she said. “It’s all about creating an ecosystem for their users.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Toronto at hugomiller@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 11, 2009 14:23 EDT