Every major smartphone platform would like to emulate the success of Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. Two competitors, RIM and Microsoft, took important steps towards this goal this week—at least in terms of usability for end users.
At the second annual BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco, RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillies
announced plans to bring carrier billing to the BlackBerry App World next year. This would make it much easier for users to buy apps as they would no longer need to enter PayPal credentials. Instead, folks will be able make purchases quickly and spontaneously, not having to be concerned with how to paying until they receive their cell phone bill.
When Microsoft launched the Windows Marketplace for Mobile with Windows Mobile 6.5 in October, you could only buy applications on a smartphone. This week, an updated by made it possible for people to browse, buy and download applications from the software market over the Web on their PC, just like you can do for the iPhone with iTunes. Selected applications are delivered wirelessly to a Windows Mobile smartphone phone and install the next time the Windows Marketplace client runs on the device.
The upgrade to Microsoft's mobile software store also introduced anti-piracy protection and some improvements for developers, including a new portal.
In the same
blog post annoucing the upgrade, Microsoft said it will extend the Windows Marketplace for Mobile to Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 later this month.
Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch now holds over 100,0000 applications. It is an unprecedented runaway success. Whatever you think about Apple's draconian policies and rigid stranglehold on the application submission process as a developer, both the desktop and on-device versions of the App Store are incredibly easy to use. They may be improving, but Apple's competitors still have a long way to go to catch up.
