As if there weren’t enough iPhone apps, now we have too many App Stores from which to choose.
Research in Motion on Wednesday became the latest company to launch one, with its unveiling of App World for its BlackBerry phones at the CTIA wireless telecoms conference in Las Vegas.
Developers may be pleased at the possibility of greater exposure – RIM’s store will be less crowded than Apple’s, with only around a thousand applications at launch compared to the App Store’s 25,000 plus.
They should be delighted at the extra cut – RIM says they can retain 80 per cent of the sales of apps compared to 70 per cent allowed by Apple.
Microsoft announced partners on Tuesday for its Windows Marketplace for Mobile, due to open later this year. We also have Google’s Android Market and Palm is planning an app store for its Pre, due to launch mid-year.
There was also news on Wednesday of an app “superstore”. Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, China Mobile and Softbank are combining to enable developers to offer applications through them later this year that can run across different platforms, from Android to Windows Mobile.
Finally, at a dinner in San Francisco on Tuesday evening, Nokia executives outlined their plans for Ovi Store due to launch globally in a month’s time.
Marco Argenti, vice president for media at Nokia, said it would be as much an entertainment channel as an applications store, although thousands of applications from 40 countries had already been submitted by developers.
“We call it the personal media network, it will offer relevant, easy and pervasive ways of discovering new content – not only applications, but video, audio, games etc.” he said.
The revenue split of 70-30 is the same as Apple’s, but Mr Argenti told me Nokia could offer a different opportunity to developers.
“We think if we make our channel extremely optimised, extremely relevant and drive conversions on a global basis that could become a preferred channel for a lot of developers. We are thinking of reaching about 50m customers just by upgrading the existing download clients and leveraging existing channels like Mosh.
“We also have a relevancy engine where, whether you are in the UK, Italy or Spain say, you will get a more localised experience. So those are competitive advantages that could make this distribution channel a very scalable and hopefully profitable one for developers.”
Despite this, Apple still has a big lead in both apps and in hardware – the 50m customers Nokia can immediately address beats the 30m-plus iPhone and iPod touch units sold to date, but most are using lower-end handsets than the iPhone and can’t enjoy the same experience.
