In an endeavor to enhance the appeal of its BlackBerry platform among developers and users, Research in Motion (RIM) announced at its second Developer Conference on Monday that it intends making a host of new APIs available by the first half next year.

Among the slew of improvements planned by RIM are - a better advertising service; in-app transactions' capability; a new payment service; an improved browser; and much better support for mobile gaming.

The enhancements will allow users to build push notifications into apps, buy an app that can be charged to their carrier bill, and avail the three new location-based services, namely - cell site geo-location; reverse geo-coding; and travel time.

In addition, the latest beta of BlackBerry Java SDK 5.0 will support OpenGL ES, which is a graphics API for 3D gaming.

The BlackBerry-maker's co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, said at the conference that RIM will also back Adobe Flash for BlackBerry phones, as well as facilitate the developers' Flash-based content creation for the company's smartphones.

Noting that the newly-announced RIM move would definitely attract Flash developers presently creating Flash-based content for websites, Steve Howard, the MobiHand President and CEO, said: "It's a competitive blast at Apple. There are a huge number of developers qualified to develop in Flash and tightly integrating Flash with the BlackBerry environment injects energy into the BlackBerry platform."