The Research In Motion stock (TSE:RIM) is surging in past mid-day trading as the company confirmed today it would launch a new BlackBerry application store in China.

BlackBerry smartphones already available in China through China Telecom, but the application store comes as the company tries to make its devices more consumer friendly as competing products such as the iPhone from Apple become more enterprise capable.

The Chinese market is currently the top mobile phone market in the world, with more than 700-million mobile subscribers in the country.

The emerging Chinese market will surely play a significant role when it comes to growth and fueling future earnings for the smartphone makers.

Thousands of applications are already available on BlackBerry devices through BlackBerry App World, but the apps have largely lacked in terms of quality and multimedia as seen on the iPhone.

Despite the BlackBerry largely catering to the enterprise world with unrivaled device security and messaging, the consumer market segment remains exceedingly important.

RIM cannot afford to lose market share in the consumer segment, especially as more phones, like Google Android, are arguably on par with the BlackBerry when it comes to business.

Research In Motion has also announced it has partnered with numerous popular Chinese-based websites to port their sites to work on the BlackBerry platform.

More specifically, RIM has already announced partnerships with Asia’s top online search engine Baidu, and the game website Tencent.

BlackBerry devices will also later become available on the carrier China Mobile, as RIM will create a compatible device to support the network standard used by the telecom.

RIM is expected to release a new BlackBerry model capable of capturing high-definition pictures and videos, along with a faster processor and additional memory by this October.

It is also likely that latest BlackBerry device would include a front-facing camera integrated with BlackBerry Messenger that is capable of video conferencing.

The RIM stock is up more than $3 per share, up 6-percent, to $54.75 per share as at 2:07pm.