Screenshots And Analysis Of Blackberry’s Storefront

by Jason Wilk on January 19, 2009

  • RIM has released official images of their Blackberry application center, the Blackberry Storefront. RIM is yet another mobile manufacturer who thinks a standard platform that allows third-party developers in to sell applications is going to solve everything for the company. Palm has just released their plans of having a platform for third party developers, Android already has theirs (with paid apps coming soon), and several others are planned to be released this year.
  • Research In Motion is looking to launch their store in the next 6 weeks, and it took a major step forward when it started accepting applications from app writers to be included in the launch. Blackberry has a few apps already, but have been widely disliked thus far. Apps like Facebook for the Blackberry aren’t nearly as intuitive and functional as they are on the iPhone.
  • Some worry that because of the Blackberry lineup of phones, some developers will be turned off. The Storm’s ‘half-push, half-touch’ screen make it difficult to mimic games already popular for some developers on the iPhone who are interested in testing out another platform. Also, the Blackberry Curve and Bold both have standard non-touch QWERTY keyboards with scroll balls, another turnoff for potential developers not only for non-compatibility, but overall lack of intuitiveness. Apple is currently King of app developers and sales. They just passed the 500 million app download mark this past week. RIM will be succesfful if they can recruit 1/3 of the amount of developers using iPhone’s SDK. They are off to a decent start however, offering a special VC fund to help find developers and grow apps for its platform.
  • Do you think other manufacturer’s can compete with Apple in the standard platform market? Does RIM stand a chance with their phone lineup? I think Android Market will be the only real competitor to Apple’s store and that RIM doesn’t stand a chance beyond the no-brainer apps you expect to see on their phones.

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Tagged as: Android, app, appl, Apple, application, Applications, blackberries, blackberry, bold, Companies, Company, Compete, competitor, current, curve, Facebook, Funding, game, games, Gaming, i launch, images, manufacturer, market, Mobile, offerings, Palm, party, phone, recruiters, recruiting, RIM, sales, sdk, standard platform, storefront, storm

  • A few corrections
    I have a few disagreements (and a few corrections) to your entry.

    > RIM has released official images of their Blackberry application center, the Blackberry Storefront

    "BB App Center" and "BB Storefront" are two different things. This link: http://crackberry.com/talking-app-center-app-st... explains it beter than I ever could.


    > Apps like Facebook for the Blackberry aren’t nearly as intuitive and functional as they are on the iPhone.
    Are we talking about the same "Facebook for iPhone". Go to Apple's App Store, and read the 20 most recent reviews: "riddled with bugs" "this app is acting stupid" "Not user friendly"

    And Facebook highlights the biggest annoyance about 3rd party iPhone apps -- they can't run in the background. So while on the BB, you'll receive notifications in the status bar when new messages arrive, Facebook for iPhone can't update itself in the background -- it needs to poll each time you launch the app.

    There are plenty of examples of apps on the iPhone that outshine their BB counterpart (e.g. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart), but Social Networking apps for the BlackBerry (in general) are just as functional as their iPhone counterpart -- and are often better because they can update themselves while in the background.

    > make it difficult to mimic games already popular for some developers on the iPhone

    I suspect most developers are able to adapt to handle real keyboards, trackballs, etc.

    I don't think they are attracting the same developer set. After all, you don't see Viigo, Bplay or mobigloo writing software for the iPhone. Certainly the "big" players (EA, Sega, etc.) will have no trouble developing for both.

    > I think Android Market will be the only real competitor to Apple’s store
    Time will tell. I think that since Android and BlackBerry apps are written using the same development environment (Eclipse) and the same language (Java 2 ME), you'll see a lot of synergy there.

    > RIM doesn’t stand a chance beyond the no-brainer apps
    > you expect to see on their phones.

    You're kidding, right? Usually people criticize iPhone for it's no-brainer apps (iFart, tip calculators galore, iBeer). It's the first time I've seen that applied to BB apps.
  • j.p
    I completely agree with you that the Blackberry family of phones is a turnoff to developers. Half the games I love for the iPhone wouldnt work on the Storm if you wanted to create the same experience. Good post.
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