BlackBerry App World Goes Live

by Jordan Yerman | April 1, 2009 at 07:00 am

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Blackberry App World is now live in the UK , USA and Canada. Announced early last month, the online shop for Crackberry apps is like the Apple App Store for the PIN set. So, i fyou see more people bumping into parking meters than you normally do, this is why.

Though not a user myself, I checked out a few early reviews of the service, which are generally positive, but some are finding rather perplexing usabily issues, including an Internet Explorer requirement.

The product life cycle for the BlackBerry has been different from that of the iPhone, whose handset and app store were developed together. ON the other hand, several generations of le craque have been birthed before its own app clearinghouse came into being.

There are fewer free apps than perhaps one would like, but I'm interested to see how many developers embrace the less-cuddly medium.

When you tether your BlackBerry to the laptop you get an odd prompt when you try to download App World from the Web: Firefox isn’t supported and you need IE—for a BlackBerry phone!

It seems like a sensible interface, since Crackberry users are already versed in modifying their handsets via BES (Blackberry Exchange Server), even for tweaks like ringtone-changing.

Also, the call is out for developers to submit applications for the store.

Price-wise, though, it gets weird: applications are either free, or beginning at a price point of US$2.99. By comparison, the least-expensive (non-free) iPhone app is 99 cents, but I'm not sure how much this difference will affect prospective buyers, since this is only one of many functional differences between the two devices.