I keep meetting with entrepeneurs that are building crazy (ie wonderful) iPhone applications. They are getting more sophisticated in capabilities but they remain gorgeous to the touch (literally).
I’ve been happy with my recent switch to the Blackberry 8900. It’s an incredible phone but it needs applications. Badly.
These same entrepreneurs tell me that the Blackberry app store is for real and launching in the next month. But I have yet to see any demos of the bb app store or if those apps will look any different than current BB apps.
Right now Blackberry actually has a pretty simple method for over the air app installs. To date BB owners can just download applications from the developer. Want Google Maps? Just point your bb browser to google.com/gmm. Download the app and go. It’s a little awkward because the browser isn’t great. But the install from the developer or publisher model is straightforward.
The BB App Store should provide a better search and discovery model for new apps. And it will provide an easy payment method compared to the current model.That is a big deal.
But the open question in my mind is the quality of the new apps coming out. These current Java apps are just clunky.
Does Blackberry need to provide a SDK for developers? Is it just a limitation in the current stack and hardware? Or something else? Or is the UI framework sucky for these 3rd party apps?
I need to dig in more on subject.