October 6th, 2008
Blackberry Storm, 'Application Center' info leaked
Wow, a whole lot of Blackberry-related news surfaced this weekend.
First, the user’s guide to the highly-anticipated Blackberry Storm was leaked by the ever-intrepid BoyGeniusReport, who posted exclusive images on their website.
Second, and more importantly, news of the Blackberry Application Center has emerged. Taking a page — hell, a chapter — from the iPhone App Store and T-Mobile G1 Android Market book, RIM has created a store “aimed to launch on the the BlackBerry Storm’s version 4.7 operating system” that will allow the user to find, browse and install third-party BlackBerry apps hosted by carriers, reports Crackberry.
The App Center is reported to consist of a device-side application and a server backend hosted by RIM that the application will interact with to retrieve up to date application list of applications hosted by the carriers.
The ever-popular Crackberry has the details:
- The Application Center will be available on 4.7 Storm devices and will be designed for the Storm touch screen UI.
- Carriers will be responsible for hosting the application data and sending updates to the directory to RIM.
- The main application screen will provide the user with a list of all applications that are available for install from the particular carrier for the specific device model and OS version. Incompatible applications will not be displayed.
- The main screen will provide the user the ability to quickly browse the application list, then view the available information about each application in a detailed description screen which shows the logo and full description. Installation will occur with one click (launches the web browser).
- The user will be able to access the Options > Applications screen from within the App Center (allowing the user to delete applications directly from within the App Center).
- The user will be provided with various status info: date the app list was most recently updated; notification that updates are available; option to reapplication list was completed, etc.
- Since the download and installation will be handled by the browser in this first release, the Application Center will not be capable of restarting the application / download intelligently.
- The Application Center will automatically check for updates daily.
To compare, the iPhone App Store is the sole hub for developers to sell apps and consumers to purchase them, while RIM seems to offer the App Center as a centralized forum for carriers to more easily distribute their apps.
Either way, looks like they’ve still got stiff competition: Apple iPhone sales recently surpassed Q4 analyst estimates of 4 million and rung in its 2008 goal of 10 million (and counting).
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Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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