iPhone wannabees are not only imitating the Apple handset’s roomy touch-screen.

They’re also mindful that the iPhone AppStore has been a runaway hit. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says since the start of August the online store (which now includes two Kiwi-authored programs in its Top 100 sellers) has been raking in $US1 million a day.

AppStore is drawing customers to iPhone like flies, and fattening Jobs’ wallet with some nice recurring after-sales revenue.

Google’s open source Android project comes at things from a different angle, offering free software, but expanding the mobile audience for the company’s context-sensitive text ads.

Nokia is also getting in on the act with an online application store featuring as part of its (still little promoted) Ovi service.

AppStore and Android are changing the way people think about the formerly closed world of cellphone software. Increasingly, whatever model phone they tote, customers will expect to be able to pick and mix from a huge amount of downloadable software. Free-for-all customisation is in, canned environments are out.

This state of affairs poses something of a conundrum for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM).  

Much of the BlackBerry’s famed user-friendliness comes from the fact it operates on one of the most closed systems in the world. Your BlackBerry handset runs BlackBerry software and connects to a BlackBerry server sitting inside Vodafone, and maybe a BlackBerry server at your office, too, if you’re a larger organisation. It’s tightly buttoned, and little goes wrong.

Now, a grassroots insurgency is underway. Apple’s iPhone, which can sync with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook (and recently IBM Lotus Notes, too) is increasingly appearing in offices. With Steve Jobs’ play phone invading its home turf, RIM responded by letting its hair down a little with a series of “lifestyle” apps such as Facebook (already on the Bold, released yesterday) which will become available for all its BlackBerries before the end of the year.

Now, RIM is set to push that approach further. When the iPhone-like BlackBerry Storm is released in November, the company will go live with the BlackBerry Application Center. Details are still scant, but leaks indicate that Application Center will let BlackBerry owners download software written by independent developers.

It does seem like Application Centre will be some distance from the relative free-for-all of Apple’s AppStore and Google’s Android, however. The rumour is that AppCentre will only be available for Storm owners and, more pertinently, there will not be one global download service a la Apple’s AppStore. Rather, in each country AppCenter will be hosted by a carrier – and so far, Vodafone, and the Verizon-Vodafone joint venture Verizon wireless – are the only two telcos that will carry the Storm on their networks.

In a related development, RIM is to hold its first ever developer conference, which will take place in Silicon Valley October 20-22.