Blackberry Apps Now Available from Verizon’s V Cast App Store

Today Verizon announced the launch of it V Cast App Store on Blackberry smartphones. This will go head-to-head with RIM’s own Blackberry App World and Handango. Apps purchased from V Cast are billed to a subscriber’s phone bill. The V Cast App Store is currently available on the BlackBerry Bold 9650, Storm 9550, Curve 8530 and Tour 9630 and will be coming in the next couple weeks to the forgotten devices… the Storm 9530 and Curve 8330. Want to check out the V Cast App Store? Verizon’s making it easy by pushing an icon to your Blackberry.

Why am I mildly excited about this? 1. Blackberry App World and Handango are both rather crummy. 2. RIM’s not dead and might not die as fast as a lot of us were predicting. Some amazing reports have come out about the upcoming WebKit browser that will be featured in OS 6.0. Apparently, it scores higher on certain standard Acid tests than Android 2.1 and Apple’s Mobile Safari. While the browser advancement is good news, Blackberry still lags the two giants, Android and iOS, in app development by an impressively wide margin.

Android offers users the ability to return paid apps within 24 hours for a full refund if they’re unsatisfied. While V Cast does not appear to have a similar return policy, it is somewhat less necessary on Blackberry. RIM controls both the hardware and the software on Blackberry phones. With Android, not every app plays nice with every Android device. Because of this problem, returns are sometimes necessary. I returned an app once but all of the other apps I’ve downloaded played nice on my Incredible.

For more information about the Blackberry advancements, including OS 6.0 and the new browser, I highly recommend Salomondrin’s site. He is generally the blogosphere’s starting point of all reliable Blackberry rumors and he’s been kind enough to pay us a visit and comment on a post about his 9800 prediction he made back before the holidays.

[via Official Verizon Press Release]

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