Posted by Eric Mills on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 @ 09:17 PM
I love iPhone apps. I love using them. I love shopping for them. I love reading about them. I love designing them. I love teaching business what they are all about and I love how they make life better. I also know that there is this little platform called Blackberry that lots of other people love. In fact, more people may love the Blackberry than love the iPhone. Blackberry is still outselling the iPhone, so they must be doing something right. I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
I received a brand new Blackberry Bold and after 2 seconds of pressing buttons, I was off looking for the Blackberry App World. I looked for a long time (20 minutes of going in and out of menus), then I just had to google it. Hint, it isn't in the folder called "Applications". It turns out that you have to download App World onto the blackberry by going to a specific url in the browser. This is a big mistake for RIM. Joe six-pack isn't going to google for the App World download link. In fact, most Blackberry owners I know don't even know about Blackberry's version of the app store. Do you think there are any iPhone users who don't know about the Apple app store? I don't think so. Apple makes the app store part of the product. It is one of the reasons why you actually buy an iPhone or iPod touch. Because there is an app for that. But I digress.
So I download and install App World, but afterwards, I can't find it. I had to look through all the menus again. Hint, it still isn't in the folder called "Applications". It is in the downloads folder. Once I get into App World, I start feeling better. There are lots of apps. They were categorized well, and the search was decent. It was easy to navigate and find some apps I wanted to check out. Of course the prices were much higher than iPhone apps (minimum price is $2.99 in App World). The app preview isn't nearly as good as iPhone. The screenshots aren't nearly as big, and there isn't nearly as much information as the app store. Never-the-less, App World has some apps that aren't in the app store. I found Age of Empires and a few others that I wish were on the iPhone. Overall, it was a good experience.
So is App World going to gain market share for mobile aps? Well, it only has one way to go, and that is up, since it has about 0% of the mobile app market share right now. So many millions of people have Blackberries and love them, so I believe App World is going to do just fine. Competition is good for the industry. Viva Mobile Apps!