Blackberry created the smart phone market and they have continued to be one of the largest players in the market. One of the results of the popularity of the Blackberry is that it has changed the way that people are using the internet. Websites can be a bit a pain to use with a smart phone so most people have started using apps instead. There are literally tens of thousands of apps available these days and you can pretty much find one for anything. The problem of course is that you have to find them. This is where the Blackberry App World comes in, it is a distributor of thousands of apps for the Blackberry.
There are a few different ways that you can find apps for your smart phone, the most basic is just to use a search engine. However the smart phone makers soon came to the realization that it would be in everybody's best interest if there was one place that people could go in order to get apps for their smart phone. For a Blackberry that place is the Blackberry App World. This allows people to quickly and easily find the apps they are looking for and to browse through the options to see what is available. Not everybody is happy however with this method of distribution.
The issue that some people have with sites like the Blackberry App World is that it gives the manufacturer control over the content. Since the people who make the Blackberry are the same ones who decide which apps go on the site there is room for abuse. At some point Blackberry App World could decide to only allow apps that come from developers who enter into a partnership with them to appear on the site. This would effectively give the makers control over what apps make it on to your smart phone. While this hasn't been an issue yet with Blackberry it has become an issue with some of their competitors, particularly Apple. Having control over content would effectively freeze out the independent developers as well as the internet marketers.
From the standpoint of the internet marketer being able to get your app onto people's smart phones is going to be critical in the future. As apps start to replace websites as the main way that people use the internet a whole new way of marketing will be required. This will be done by using apps to brand your business. This is only going to happen if you can get people to download your app, which is why having one site dominate the market for app downloads is such a problem for so many people. It hasn't really become a problem yet but as the money starts rolling in from the downloads of apps and the products that are being sold through them you can bet that will change.