It took a bit over two years, but Research In Motion has hit a major milestone. The company has hit one billion downloads on the BlackBerry App World application store. The milestone was achieved between smartphones and tablets. It took about the same amount of time for the Android Market to hit the same milestone. Apple is currently seeing about one billion downloads per month for their App Store. [Inside BlackBerry]

Research In Motion Limited (TSE:RIM) is now providing free BlackBerry Protect service to all BlackBerry users. This service was only previously available to enterprise users. The BlackBerry Protect service allows people to locate, back up, and remotely wipe their handsets. The BlackBerry Protect service can be downloaded from BlackBerry App World. Another useful feature is the ability to have an extra loud ring for when your handset cannot be found or mapping it on the GPS. [The Register UK via SlashGear]

Research In Motion (RIM) is adding support for Android applications on the BlackBerry PlayBook. This is interesting considering that BlackBerry has their own competing mobile application store called BlackBerry App World. A RIM representative was caught in the video below saying “we will also support Android apps when we release the Dalvik engine on top of QNX.” This video was filmed at Mobile World Congress.

BlackBerry App World 2.1 has officially launched and and now RIM is offering in-app payment support just like Apple iOS and Google Android has. The BlackBerry Payment Service is used for in-app payments and it comes with a new SDK. RIM developers will be able to use the BlackBerry App World Vendor Portal to manage virtual goods. [SlashGear]

Fortune’s Seth Weintraub has written a lengthy article about how 2011 will be an explosive year for the Android operating system.  He also pointed out that about 269.9 million smartphones were sold this year compared to the 173.5 million shipped in 2009.  In 2011 we could see a shipment of about 500 million smartphones across the world.  I’ve pulled up a couple of charts from previous reports I have written about in regards to smartphone market share to make a prediction myself.  The chart in the top left is Smartphone Market Share from Q1 2010 by Nielsen (Exhibit A).  The second chart is smartphone OS mix Q3 2010 put together by Millenial Media, a mobile advertising analytics company (Exhibit B).

As if getting kicked out of the BlackBerry App World wasn’t enough, Research In Motion is also suing the company behind Kik Messenger. Kik created a message application that competes directly with the BBM messenger service on BlackBerry devices. RIM removed Kik from BlackBerry App World on November 12th for “breaching contractual obligations.” On November 30th RIM filed a patent infringement lawsuit case against Kik in Canada’s Federal Court in Toronto. [Gizmodo]

Research In Motion Limited (TSE:RIM) has made BlackBerry App World viewable on PC web browsers. This makes it easier to view what apps are available on a bigger screen. Users can also purchase apps directly from the website. You can also edit and sync downloads directly to BlackBerry smartphones. RIM users can read and write reviews to applications that they have downloaded. You can view the BlackBerry App World from your computer at this URL: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/.

Drive Safe.ly is a mobile application that lets you read e-mail or receive/send SMS messages while you are driving. This makes it easier to communicate while you are driving. The way it works is simple: Turn it on before you start driving and incoming e-mails and text messages will be read to you. If the application messes up when you say the text message that you want to send out, you can always say “Try again.” The e-mail and SMS read/respond application costs about $13.95 per year or $3.95 per month. The application download is free on BlackBerry App World and Android Market. [Drive Safe.ly via Lifehacker]