Briefly put, storage is either direct-to-database in which case only 'your' app can know about it and read the data, or it's via a
Content Provider that any app may use to work with the data.
The page linked to above actually contains a code snippet showing how to access the phone book. As it says on the help page, you can see some of them listed in the
android.provider package. You will notice, however, that it's mainly listing contacts, bookmarks, and media providers -- I am not entirely sure how to
programmatically obtain a comprehensive listing of
all providers currently available on a device, and the necessary names and constants.
If someone else knows, please do share! Perhaps there's an Open Providers registry somewhere, analogous to
Open Intents?