BlackBerry World now has more than 10,000 applications on its shelves. This would be more impressive if Android didn't have ten times that number, and iOS more than twice what Android's got.

But BlackBerry World is only 18 months old, and version two only came out last month. The new version improved the user experience hugely, making it easier to search for apps, and more importantly to pay for them, so RIM hasn't had much time to reach its 10K milestone.

Version two allows users to pay by credit card. Previously only PayPal was accepted, adding another step to the purchase process. In the USA AT&T customers can also have applications added to their phone bill - the holy grail of simplicity for app stores.

iPhone users might laugh, with their stock of 250,000 applications and Apple dealing with the revenue collection, but it's not always quantity that counts. A quick perusal of BlackBerry World shows a mere 17 fart-related applications: less than 0.02 per cent of the total.

That compares very favourably to Apple's fart rate of 0.31 per cent. Even Android manages a rate of 0.11, so either Android users will also pay for parps; or developers think they will.

That might just be a reflection of iPhone users as joyous pranksters, while those straight-laced BlackBerry-touting businessmen have more serious things on their mind, but we can't help thinking which we'd prefer to be stuck in a lift with.

RIM is obviously serious about software, as its recent acquisition of DataViz demonstrates, but even if BlackBerry World is packed with quality applications, RIM will be hoping this milestone is the first point on a steeply-curved graph. ®