The release of Amazon's Kindle last year dew a lot of welcome attention to the ever-fledgling electronic word industry, which PDA and smartphone' users have been well aware of for years. Mobipocket Reader, a popular application for a number of different mobile-device platforms, has just gained a very Kindle-like feature for BlackBerry users, Over The Air (OTA) downloads.

Download and installing the free Mobipocket Reader 6.0 upgrade now gives BlackBerry owners the ability to not read e-books, but peruse, buy and download e-books from Mobiepocket’s over 65,000-title strong catalogue as well. Users can also download free samples and reader reviews written by other Mobipocket users.

As reader, Mobilepocket gives you tools to annotate, bookmark, and highlight e-books and synchronize and save them to your PC. Even when you delete a book from a BlackBerry or upgrade to another model, your annotations, bookmarks and highlights remain embedded.

"The ability to find, discover and buy books, and have instant access to them from anywhere at any time, is the ultimate convenience for Mobipocket customers," asserted Mobipocket CEO Martin Gorner in a statement. "In addition, we help customers make informed buying decisions by allowing them access to reader reviews and sample downloads. We are really excited to bring our ebook catalog, innovative features and the convenient OTA access to Blackberry users."

See here for the full range of Mobiepocket features. The software is also available for Windows Mobile, the Symbian OS (UIQ and S60) and the Palm OS on the PDA/smartphone front.

Mobiepocket’s current top-ten bestsellers include the following titles: Ultimate Classic Library - OVER 3,000 WORKS, To Bed a Beauty, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 7th edition, A New Earth (Oprah's Book Club), Ultimate Bible Study Suite, No Country for Old Men, To Pleasure a Lady, Deep Storm, Mormon Church's Sacred Texts: the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, The Pillars of the Earth