It’s been a whirlwind year for BlackBerry holding company Researh in Motion. The group released its most successful handset to date (the ever affordable BlackBerry Curve 8520), dealt with governmental threats and debuted several new handsets (Curve 3G, Pearl 3G and Torch) as well as its updated operating system, - BlackBerry OS 6.

In addition to this, RIM yesterday announced that BlackBerry App World had hit a significant milestone in its lifecycle. Yesterday, via the BlackBerry Twitter account, the group confirmed that BlackBerry App world users now have access to 10 000 applications.

Although this may pale in comparison the Apple’s iStore and Google’s Android Marketplace it shows significant growth in terms of development for the BlackBerry platform. In July last year, the group announced that it had hit the 2000 application mark. This means that in thirteen months BlackBerry App World has grown by 500%.

What’s more is that BlackBerry App World 2, which was released last month, now gives users the ability to purchase applications using Mastercard or Visa - a significant departure from the exclusive PayPal option which was previously available. In addition to this, the applications which were previously displayed in US Dollar denominations are now displayed in Rand denominations for local users.

Although local development for the BlackBerry platform has been slow, regional head Deon Liebenberg recently revealed that the company will be putting significant resources behind local application development for Blackberry users.