Android Market now in the book business

The Android Market (in the US at least) has received a welcome addition in the form of ebooks that can now be purchased. A Books portal has recently made an appearance, which forms a separate entity to the regular Apps section. According to TechRadar, books downloaded from the store will appear in the Google Books library on the user’s Android phone. (Since Google Books has not been released in SA, its highly doubtful that this service will come to SA soon.)

But is Google planning a trinity of music, books and video services for Android Market? Clues are pointing to that direction, since two new URLs, including one for movies and one for music have made their arrival recently. At this stage it is not populated, rather just diverting users to the main page.

Android apps running on BlackBerry smartphones?

On the topic of Android, reports started surfacing earlier this month that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) is making plans to run Android apps on its PlayBook tablet. According to ShopSavvy’s blog, it might not just be the PlayBook that the company is aiming to bring Android apps to. ShopSavvy has been tracking smartphones that are making use of its services by way analytics service Flurry.

Based on this Flurry data, it discovered that at least three of RIM’s smartphones has been running its ShopSavvy for Android app. These three BlackBerry devices are the 8300 that ran ShopSavvy on 31 January 2011, the BlackBerry 8600 which ran ShopSavvy on 17 and 24 January 2011 and the BlackBerry Curve 8520 that ran ShopSavvy on 7 February 2011.

According to tech blog CrackBerry, the current BlackBerry Curve 9300 was dubbed the BlackBerry 8600 during its testing phase, but this device has been available in the market for a while now. Sounds like a story for the tech section of Ripley’s Believe it or not to us.

Image: ShopSavvy

 

 

 

The Daily coming to Android?

On the topic of apps running on foreign operating systems, the tech rumour mill has started to churn out reports that the newly launched iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, will make the jump to Android. According to the sources of AllThingsDigital, The Daily will become available for Android-running tablets during Q2 of 2011. The Daily belongs to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. News Corp., by the way, also owns the Wall Street Journal, as well as this paper’s Digital Network which includes the AllThingsDigital tech blog, so we’re inclined to believe them.