Mobipocket support OTA purchases on Blackberry

[DaleDe]

A new feature for Blackberry users is Over the Air purchase of Mobipocket eBooks directly from the device. See:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/Downloa...ice=Blackberry

Forget your desktop computer: the Mobipocket Reader now gives you Over The Air (OTA) access to the entire eBook catalogue from your Blackberry. At any time, and you can be anywhere, you will find your favorite stories among more than 65.000 premium titles ! Download and try free samples, read other reader's reviews, buy and download instantly the titles you like... all from your Blackberry.

Move over Kindle and iPhones, Blackberry has joined the group.

Dale

[Nate the great]

How is this news? Mobipocket released this last fall.

[tcv]

Yes, I am confused. I have been doing this for awhile. Now, the process is a little ... interesting. You browse the catalog in the app. When you purchase, or click the purchase, you go to the Blackberry browser, pay there, come back to the app which then downloads the book.

But, in general, this is how it's been done since the beginning...?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

How is this news? Mobipocket released this last fall.

Sorry, I thought it was news. I hadn't seen it referenced in this forum before. Certainly they have always had application download but I thought direct eBook download was new. My bad I guess.

Dale

[tcv]

No Problem!!

[bbusybookworm]

now I just wish they'll release a iPhone / iPod Touch version.

Then they would have a presence on every major smartphone version.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

now I just wish they'll release a iPhone / iPod Touch version.

Then they would have a presence on every major smartphone version.

That is true. But they still don't support purchasing books on any of their Palm or Windows smartphones which is too bad.

Dale

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

That is true. But they still don't support purchasing books on any of their Palm or Windows smartphones which is too bad.

Dale

Probably has something to do with the fact that Mobipocket on the Palm and Windows platforms preceded the development or at least the widespread adoption of Smart phone variants of them.

At that time, Very few if any users had web access on their Devices. So it did not make sense to offer that service. and most updates have probably built up on that original base.

The had to write the client for the blackberry from the ground up, and were probably able to put in the over the air feature as most users will always have some sort of data connection. I figure thet once they work out the kinks of this, they might port the feature onto the other mobile versions.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

That is true. But they still don't support purchasing books on any of their Palm or Windows smartphones which is too bad.

Dale

That's not true, more or less.

Depending on the CPU, Windows Mobile/PocketPC/SmartPhone/WinCE are limited to MobiReader 4.9 or 5.3. Version 4.9 was copyright in 2003 and it's still in use because Mobipocket never released a newer version. Version 5.3 was only released for ARM CPU.

I use version 4.9 on my devices, and it does support over the air downloads as well as ebook buying from the device. It doesn't do it very well, though, because it relies on a web browser such as IE. It's not very well integrated.

As I've said before, there are very few software features of the Kindle that Mobipocket hadn't already thought of and incorporated into MobiReader long before the company was bought by Amazon. That's why I call the Kindle a Mobipocket device.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

That's not true, more or less.

Depending on the CPU, Windows Mobile/PocketPC/SmartPhone/WinCE are limited to MobiReader 4.9 or 5.3. Version 4.9 was copyright in 2003 and it's still in use because Mobipocket never released a newer version. Version 5.3 was only released for ARM CPU.

I use version 4.9 on my devices, and it does support over the air downloads as well as ebook buying from the device. It doesn't do it very well, though, because it relies on a web browser such as IE. It's not very well integrated.

As I've said before, there are very few software features of the Kindle that Mobipocket hadn't already thought of and incorporated into MobiReader long before the company was bought by Amazon. That's why I call the Kindle a Mobipocket device.

If they support OTA purchase on Windows Mobile Smartphones you would think that they would advertise it on their web site. Strange.

Dale

[mores]

Hooray!

not!

How about they fix all the bugs in various versions (Symbian, for example) and maybe work on pleasing the increasing number of iPhone users