Bolt Mobile Browser Is Off to the Races

Posted by Mauricio on Mar 3, 2009 at 3:02 PM | Comments

By David Needle:

BlackBerry users are the majority of 150,000 downloads of the speedy alternative browser in since its beta release earlier this year.

A few years ago, the idea of downloading a third-party browser to a mobile device was something only mostly tech savvy users would even consider. Nowadays, particularly with the popularity of Apple’s App Store for the iPhone, customizing your mobile device is far more common.

Bolt is a great example of this brave new software world. Bolt is a generic mobile browser that runs on a variety of mobile devices, but Bitstream, its developer, tweaked it a bit for BlackBerry users making use of specific key functions, like T for top and B for going to the bottom of the screen.

The growing popularity of third-party applications prompted RIM itself to develop an online storefront for applications that it’s slated to rollout this month, but Bitstream isn’t waiting. It released a private beta of Bolt for BlackBerry and other mobile devices in January and opened it up to a more public beta last month.

In that time, the company said its Bolt browser has been downloaded over 150,000 times. “The response has been completely overwhelming. It shows we’re meeting a real unmet need,” Bitstream CEO Anna Chagnon told InternetNews.com.