BlackBerry App Store Offers New BlackBerry Mobile Software

By: Jennifer Hong
Published: Apr 1, 2009
Updated: Mar 16, 2010

BlackBerry App Store debuts with hundreds of mobile phone software available for devices. Research In Motion offers free and paid software which can be downloaded directly to smartphones.

Research In Motion Limited has launched its new BlackBerry App World which offers games, news, weather, finance, health, and social networking software for mobile phones. While the new store is similar to Apple Inc's iPhone App Store, providing free and paid software, it contains hundreds of apps for smartphone devices. The company also expects to have over 1,000 apps this week.

"The BlackBerry platform provides a truly unparalleled mobile experience for millions of people and we are thrilled today to enhance that experience with a new app store that helps connect consumers with developers and carriers," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO.

BlackBerry App Store is actually named the "BlackBerry App World" which RIM hopes will serve a wide variety of personal and business apps for mobile phone consumers. However, social networking apps seem limited without Twitter, but the online store does offer Facebook and MySpace. RIM says that other apps, including Twitter, Google, and Amazon will make their way online by next week.

"BlackBerry App World aggregates a wide variety of personal and business apps in a way that makes it very easy for consumers to discover and download the apps that suit them while preserving the appropriate IT architecture and controls required by our enterprise customers," Lazaridis said.

BlackBerry App World features a front page carousel selection. The new store will debut new features next week.

BlackBerry App World presents a new carousel style home page which contains a list of featured applications. The apps will vary week to week which will help smartphone users discovery new software. The page also includes a "Top Downloads" section to feature the most downloaded mobile phone applications.

Mobile phone users seem to like the App World , but it does take a few minutes to understand the navigation. For example, it is much harder to buy an app online than the iPhone. We don't quite understand why RIM made it more difficult to purchase apps.

The smartphone user has to download from App World, then pay for the software using PayPal, then be prompted with several additional screens for each purchase. While the least expensive apps are priced at $2.99, there are several BlackBerry apps that are priced at $20, $30 and $40.

App World also has some unfamiliar ways for saving apps. You can only save them to the BlackBerry's internal memory, which is limited, and not to the flash memory card. However, you can save your apps online, which seems like a better idea overall.

For example, if you buy a new smartphone, you don't have to move your apps. You can connect to App World and retrieve your saved mobile phone applications. It does make better sense, but the very reasons why RIM is using a PayPal module for all BlackBerry apps is still a mystery. Paypal does provide users with security for online processing, which might be one reason.

There are several critics and Websites already jumping with comparisons between the two app stores for mobile devices. This is premature, as RIM's App World just launched. There will be thousands of new apps added to their online category, and the company is already reading feedback from its users to improve its online store.

Personally, I think it's finally time to have more variety, and I believe both stores will do well. One store is mainly for the iPhone, the other is made for the BlackBerry. The two mobile phones are popular and deliver apps to their users.