E-books are not applications

While your BlackBerry can be used for many things, we all do one thing on it more than anything else. We read. Whether it’s an email, a document, a web page, an article, or a book, we’re always reading text on our BlackBerry screens. It works well, too. But not everything about reading on a BlackBerry is perfect. It starts, I think, with e-books. In browsing through the BBGeeks Store to check out the new applications, I was greeted with a deluge of e-books. They filled Page 1 of the new apps section. And Page 2…and Pages 3, 4, 5…all the way up to Page 13. Only then did I see an actual application. (OK, so I saw a flashlight app, but we know that doesn’t count.) This does not make for easy browsing. You see the same thing in App World when looking for new apps. Go check out their newest apps list. About 70 of the first 75 apps are e-books. Most of the rest are local sports and radio apps. That doesn’t leave much for those of us who want to discover new applications. Why even have a new apps section if it’s just going to be filled with e-books? I have nothing against the medium — I read on my BlackBerry all the time. But I don’t want a list of new e-books when I’m looking for new apps. E-books are not apps. They are books. RIM and Mobihand should classify them as such.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.