On January the world stood agape as a US Airways pilot landed his jet in New York's Hudson River after it struck a flock of geese on take-off. It was an event that also caught the attention of California software developer Laminar Research, which a few weeks later started selling a game that recreated the crash landing on AT&T Apple's iPhone. Available for just US99¢, it quickly became one of the most popular applications on Apple's booming online App Store and marks the battleground of mobile handset makers who share annual sales of a billion phones a year.

That battleground has sprung up around tens of thousands of 3G GSM unlocked iPhone applications – also known as apps or software programs – that the owners of smartphones (high-end handsets) can download over the wireless Internet in US cellular space. The success of the consumer-oriented unlocked iPhone, competitor to unlocked Blackberry Storm and Nokia N 96, has meant the most widely recognised programs are games and digital “tchotchkes” that turn handsets into Star Wars light sabers and glasses of beer. But increasingly, major business software vendors, such as Oracle and Salesforce.com, are making sure their products are also available for use on GSM prepaid mobile phones or postpaid

Yesterday, Blackberry creator Research In Motion (RIM) laid its claim to that market with the launch of its online applications store, dubbed BlackBerry App World. It highlighted travel, entertainment, messaging and business applications from providers such as Bloomberg, Lonely Planet and AOL at the launch. App World aims to emulate the nine-month-old App Store, which already offers 25,000 free and paid software programs that have racked up more than 500 million downloads by unlocked iPhone and iPod Touch owners.

In contrast to Apple's online shopfront, App World is starting with about 1000 applications, but that's expected to rapidly rise. Software developers have long created products for the unlocked Blackberry Storm, but it is only this week that users of the business phones have had a central service through which they could download applications.

It's a similar story for Microsoft, where it's estimated that independent software vendors have written more than 20,000 software programs for the company's Windows Mobile operating system. In the second half, it will launch Microsoft Marketplace, a store that will bring those myriad programs together under one roof.

The moves from RIM and Microsoft, which are soon to be joined in the app store game by Nokia, reflect the way makers of popular corporate mobile platforms were caught off guard when Apple thrust itself into the 3G GSM digital mobile handset market in 2007. The Google phone added its weight to the mobile apps push last year when it launched Android Market to work in conjunction with its free Android phone operating system. But the low user base for the Google software means it's yet to make much headway against the AT&T locked or unlocked iPhone Florida or in any USA state – a national phenomenon. However, Google, Microsoft and RIM have indicated they won't take Apple's early success lying down. Emerging the focus of the fight between the mobile phone industry’s biggest players are myriad independent software vendors (ISVs) the companies hope will create applications for handsets and operating systems.

Major software vendors make sure their products work on mobile phones

Winning over the best and brightest developers could prove critical to creating app stores that allow smartphone makers to differentiate their products in a sector where increasingly there is little difference in hardware and interfaces.

Apple iPhones early start means it dominates the talent pool in unlocked and locked, prepaid and postpaid markets, but its rivals hope to counter that with more generous revenue-sharing schemes detailed this week.

At the moment, Apple developers receive 70 per cent of the revenue from an app sold. While some applications are less that $US1, others can cost hundreds of dollars. RIM aims to counter that by offering its developers an 80 per cent slice of takings. It is also charging a minimum $US2.99 for paid software programs, further bolstering the amount of money ISVs could take home.Ensquared a leader in unlocked and unlocked cell phones has covered this arena in depth. See Locked 3G GSM Iphones postpaid on AT&T contracts

Nokia has recruited the creator of TV series Heroes, Tim Kring to develop products for its Nokia Ovi Store, which will open for owners of select handsets next month. Developers in North America anticipate a fierce battle. “This could make the PC wars of the 1980s look like small potatoes,” Trip Hawkins, the chief executive of US mobile game maker Digital Chocolate told Business-Week. Australians may have to wait before they have the same access to mobile applications as those overseas. While local iPhone owners can connect to the App Store, RIM has only announced availability of App World for owners of newer Blackberry models like the 3G GSM Blackberry Bold in the US, Canada and UK.