BlackBerry handhelds are hot … and getting hotter.

Shipments of Research In Motion's (RIM) popular mobile devices grew at consistent rates of 200 to 300 percent over the past year. While it took RIM five years to attract its first one million users, less than ten months went by before it doubled that number.

So it came as no surprise when software retailer Handango announced today third-party applications for BlackBerry have reached a tipping point, where it expects software sales will soon accelerate exponentially.

This increase in BlackBerry application demand goes hand in hand with RIM's growing prominence in the world of wireless handhelds.

Handango president & CEO Randy Eisenman said the company used proprietary customer data along with the growth in Blackberry sales and wireless activations to determine trends "that indicate tremendous momentum around BlackBerry."

The company's VP of marketing Clint Patterson declared these trends are similar to what Handango previously saw with the elevation of the Symbian platform to smartphone king and the corresponding enormous increase in developers, sales, and applications.

Patterson said, "Having watched mobile software markets for more than six years, we're seeing the same set of trends in BlackBerry that we saw in the Symbian OS immediately before application sales skyrocketed in the Fall of 2003 and Symbian OS phones began topping our device lists."

Handango asserted demand for BlackBerry applications grew by 1,201 percent from the first quarter last year to the same quarter this year, and 64 percent from the fourth quarter of 2004 to Q1 2005. Visitors to Handango run BlackBerry download portals grew 29 percent over the same period.

Interestingly, the retailer's findings also show the market for BlackBerry software increased at a faster rate than for the Palm platform. For example, sales per unique BlackBerry customer were up 13 higher than the Palm OS and the conversion rate for BlackBerry customers was 69 percent greater than with their Palm counterparts throughout Q1 2005.

Lastly, the number of third-party BlackBerry applications has grown an average of 41 percent quarter-over-quarter since Q1 2004.