RIM claims big consumer demand for BlackBerry

Forty-five per cent of BlackBerry users are now consumers as opposed to business users, says Research In Motion (NasdaqGS: RIMM).

What's more, the company says that 60 per cent of new subscribers during the third quarter this year were consumers a ratio that's set to increase in the fourth quarter following the launch of the in-demand BlackBerry Storm.

The claims came as RIM announced Q3 revenues of $2.78 billion. 81 per cent of those came from devices, 13 per cent from the BlackBerry email service, 2 per cent from software, and 4 per cent from other sources.

More consumers should mean more demand for BlackBerry games, especially with RIM launching its own application store in the first quarter of next year.

In fact, 2008 has seen a slow but steady ramping up of games activities on the BlackBerry platform.

"Advanced gaming" was mentioned as a key aspect of the latest version of the BlackBerry Java Development environment, released in October.

EA Mobile had already joined the ranks of BlackBerry game publishers in April, while Bluetooth controller-maker Zeemote has also announced support for BlackBerry.