Commentary

CTIA: First Look At RIM's BlackBerry App World

RIM's take on the mobile application storefront came to full realization overnight with the launch of BlackBerry App World. I downloaded the application and took it for a spin. Instant verdict: Not bad.

RIM's take on the mobile application storefront came to full realization overnight with the launch of BlackBerry App World. I downloaded the application and took it for a spin. Instant verdict: Not bad.BlackBerry App World doesn't magically appear on the BlackBerry desktop. Rather, you have to download the application from RIM's web site first (here). Once you download it, it self-installs and you can launch it immediately after install.

The storefront is not the most graphically pleasing thing I've ever seen. It falls between the iPhone Apps Store and the Android Market. The home page is plastered with feature items and shows one at a time (on the Storm, anyway). You can scan through the top 15 featured apps, which included apps such as Yahoo Messenger, Facebook, iHeartRadio, Bloomberg, Myspace, AIM, and others. Clicking on any of them brings you to an information page about that application.


More Mobility Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

I hate to rag on RIM, but holy moly the UI looks very much like the iPhone Apps Store. You can download the app right away, look at reviews, see screen shots, and read a summary about what the application does. The basic features and functions are nearly identical to what Apple offers.

From the home screen, you can also access a search function, browse the top downloaded applications, and see what apps you've already downloaded. If you punch the BlackBerry key, you'll get a more extensive menu of things to do, such as sort through the categories.

There are 13 categories, including things such as entertainment, games, maps, music, news, reference, social networking and so on. The number of apps available in each category is listed next to the category name. Not accounting for any sort of overlap between categories, there are 366 applications available immediately starting today. The apps range from free to $60, which was the most expensive app I saw. Many apps are $3, $10, $20 and all price points in between.

Diving into each category, you simply get a list of the apps in there with a little thumbnail graphic next to the application name. You can also see the cost of the application and the rating of each app without opening up the app's specific page. There is also a search bar placed at the top and you can recommend applications to others.

The basic application itself is intuitive and easy to figure out. In my experience, loading the category pages and opening specific apps pages was sluggish. So much so, that I considered ending the application and giving up.

I downloaded the WeatherBug application. The 670kb download took approximately 30 seconds, and the app took another 30 seconds or so to install. After it installed, I launched the application. I gave the app permission to access my location data. That, unfortunately, took a while. Nearly 2 minutes passed before WeatherBug was able to find me in Las Vegas. After it did, it offered me the current temperature and conditions. There were links in the application to scan other data for travel, mapping, and alerts.

In effect, the store works. It gives BlackBerry users one place to go to locate and download applications for their devices. I wish it performed a little faster, but it gets the job done.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links