I'm sure you've heard of Apple's App Store for the iPhone. But have you ever heard of an independent mobile app store called GetJar?
No? Well, that's not surprising. The tiny company now based in Silicon Valley has done virtually no marketing. And yet in the nearly five years it's been around, the company has managed to build the second largest application store front for mobile phones in the world, likely making it the biggest mobile app store you've never heard of.
The privately held Getjar claims it has nearly 57,000 applications in its store, making it second only to Apple in terms of total applications. Apple just announced this week that it now has more than 100,000 applications in its store.
Google's Android Market, which launched earlier this year has more than 10,000 applications. Research in Motion's BlackBerry App World has just more than 2,000 applications available today, according to estimates.
Since Getjar's virtual store went live in early 2005, about 650 million applications have been downloaded. And momentum has been growing. For the month of October, Getjar executives say the company saw its users download 55 million applications, which is a 267 percent increase over the same month a year ago when 15 million mobile applications were downloaded. And the company says that it has more than 300,000 registered developers uploading applications to its site.
Meanwhile, Apple's much-hyped and heavily marketed iTunes App Store, which is nearly twice the size of Getjar, as of September had more than 2 billion app downloads since the store was launched in July 2008. And executives at Apple recently said the company had 125,000 developers on its roster. By comparison, the Android Market has had an estimated 40 million downloads since it went live earlier this year.
GetJar got its start not as an application store but as a beta testing Web site for mobile developers. GetJar founder and CEO Ilja Laurs had started the site to allow developers a way to test their applications on a variety of handsets.
"Originally, we were trying to help developers who couldn't get access to certain phones for testing," he said. "But then developers came to us and asked if they could use the site to also distribute their applications."
And so the GetJar application store was born in early 2005. At first, the site attracted mostly hard-core mobile application fans. But over the years, word of the site has spread, and users all over the world come to GetJar to download different applications.
Unlike most of the other application stores that have been announced recently, GetJar's store offers mobile applications for almost any phone.
"With the GetJar store, consumers don't have to worry about whether they have an Android phone or a Java phone," said Patrick Mork, vice president of marketing for GetJar. "They don't need to know which model Nokia they have. We take the fragmentation out of the equation by auto-detecting what apps can run on which phones and offering consumers those applications."
The way it works is that GetJar is able to detect the type of phone a wireless subscriber is using when they connect to the GetJar mobile Web site. It can also detect the type of phone used from the regular Web site using a wireless subscriber's phone number.
A screen shot of a GetJar download page for the Facebook shortcut link.
(Credit: GetJar)Based on this information, GetJar is able to direct app shoppers to the applications that will work on their phones.
"If there is a BlackBerry app available and you are using a BlackBerry you will get that application," Mork said. "But if you're on a feature phone, you'll likely get a shortcut link."
This is yet another important differentiator for GetJar. Unlike device or operating system specific app stores, such as Apple's App Store or Android Market, GetJar also provides millions of consumers using basic feature phones an app-like experience, even if a specific application hasn't been developed for their particular phone.
For example, GetJar has worked with Facebook to provide a downloadable shortcut link that leads to the Facebook mobile Web site for wireless subscribers who are not using a smartphone for which a special Facebook application has been developed.
While the link is not really a native application for that specific device, the link appears on the phone's menu and provides access via the phone's browser to a mobile Web site. For consumers, the experience is very similar to that of a native application that has been downloaded to a smartphone.
"Facebook didn't have a strategy for developing applications for Motorola Razrs and Samsung Instincts" Mork said. "So they teamed up with us to get around that problem by providing short cut links. It's really not an app. But the beauty of it is that it allows any company to play in the app game from a shortcut."
And for brands, such as Facebook, the shortcut increases their mobile presence. Before it started working with GetJar, Facebook would get between 100,000 and 150,000 downloads per week from its mobile site. After the shortcut, links were available on the GetJar site and on Facebook's site, Facebook started to see 1.5 million mobile downloads per week, Mork said.
But GetJar does have some limitations. One major limitation for consumers in the U.S. is that GetJar cannot offer applications to most phones operating on Verizon Wireless's network. The reason is that Verizon uses a closed platform called BREW on many of its phones. And there is no way for third-party application developers to create applications for these devices without going through Verizon's BREW approval process. But BREW is a legacy platform for Verizon, and newer smartphones on Verizon, such as BlackBerry devices and the new Android phones, will be able to access applications from GetJar.
GetJar also doesn't explicitly serve apps to iPhone users, again because the iPhone platform is closed. But iPhone users can use the GetJar store to discover new applications and GetJar can redirect those users to the Apple App Store, where they can download the applications.
Yet another limitation is that GetJar does not offer developers the ability to charge for applications. The company has not yet figured out how to bill for these applications. Instead, application developers can monetize their applications by incorporating advertising into the application or using the app on GetJar to up-sell consumers to a more robust application in a different application store.
But GetJar does allow developers to promote their applications, and the company has developed a marketplace so that developers can bid for top promotional spots on the Web site. GetJar gets paid based on how many users download these applications. Most other application stores today do not offer developers a way to promote their applications, which makes it difficult for smaller developers to get their applications noticed.
While there is no question that Apple dominates the mobile application market today, Mork admits that Apple's push into applications has been a boon for GetJar, and likely for other app stores.
"It's undeniable that Apple has had a positive effect on our business, especially in the U.S.," he said. "But we don't really compete with Apple. Still, it's clear that the mass market is just starting to catch on. And that is largely thanks to the success of Apple and its App Store."
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Sometimes it's easier to build anew instead of trying to fix what's broken. At least that's the tune Sprint is marching to these days.
Here at the third and final day of the company's Open Developer Conference, Sprint's general manager of wireless applications, J.P. Brocket, made it quite clear that the carrier knows what works and what doesn't--and that much of the company's future growth is going to revolve around a complete reboot of its application store, set to launch as the Sprint Application Store in the first quarter of next year. The company is selling it to developers as a simple way to sell and manage their creations for multiple devices.
A big part of that simplification is accelerating its application approval process. "If you want to get something onto the (current) Sprint Software Store, someone has to review it, someone's got to test it. By the time those things happen through long lead times, we've seen that some of the content completely loses its relevance," Brocket said. "We've got to stop. We've got to get out of the way so that content can get here faster."
How fast? While Apple is currently running two weeks or more on app approval, Brocket said Sprint is aiming to get the job done in less than a week. Brocket said that much of that depends on what the app does, citing that an app for finding a local pizza place would probably slide through quite quickly, but that an app with turn-by-turn directions, or one that changed the phone's native dialer, would take a little longer.
Sprint's general manager of wireless applications, J.P. Brocket, talks about what's in store for the company's upcoming universal app store.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)The company is also bucking some of what Apple and Google have done with their application storefronts by charging developers to have their apps re-reviewed--that is, if there are problems with it. Sprint still hasn't said what this fee will be, but Brocket said it will be "low" and that the company would be making it quite clear what the problems were, so that developers could fix them before resubmitting.
Other things the company plans to offer with its new app store are multiple payment methods, especially from third parties like PayPal, Amazon, Google, and others, though Brocket said carrier billing (or being able to charge a purchase to your monthly cell phone bill) could take a little longer.
Also to be included (though at the discretion of Sprint) will be a recurring payment system. This is one area in which Sprint has been pulling back with its own apps for several years, Brocket said, but one from which some developers could benefit, if used correctly.
"For certain products, recurring payments makes a lot of sense, but it's a small subset," he said. "One major reason for that is, (when customers buy multiple applications at once), what seemed like a small $2.99 purchase all of a sudden (is) seven $2.99 purchases. I start to notice that on my bill, and now I'm calling someone about my bill to get a disconnect or because I'm dissatisfied."
That's another thing the company is trying to change with the universal application storefront: its customer service responsibilities. Brocket made it clear that the only customer service the company should be doing is in regards to its own billing and service quality. "Support is best performed by the application providers," he said. "If there are network or device or system things in the way that keep that from happening--that's on us."
Brocket concluded by saying that Sprint has "heard what you've said for eight years. Now it's time that we're going to give you an enabling channel and a path to the customer. And it's up to you to create the great content and succeed--with our help, where we can."
Verizon Wireless is jumping on the application store bandwagon and taking on Apple and its App Store with its own Vcast application store, which it announced at its first ever developer conference in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday.
The new Vcast application store will launch in the fourth quarter of 2009. Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless, said it will offer application developers a quick and simple way to distribute and monetize their applications while providing wireless subscribers with an easier way to discover and buy new applications for their smartphones.
Executives from Verizon Wireless--which has been criticized in the past for restricting devices, disabling features and blocking applications from its phones--say they recognize the industry is changing. And the new application store is one way the company can maintain its relevancy in the wireless market while also fostering innovation in the developer community.
"It's a new day (in wireless)," McAdam said in the opening address of the developer conference which was also Webcast. "And our future success is no longer in the walled-garden. Our success is tied to you (developers)."
Unlike device makers such as RIM and Nokia, or operating system software companies like Microsoft and Google (Android), which are all developing their own application stores, Verizon offers something they can't: valuable access to cell phone subscribers and their personal data.
For this reason, Verizon may stand a slightly better chance of creating a successful application storefront than these other companies. But the big question is whether the Verizon Vcast store can match the success of Apple's iTunes-based App Store.
Apple, which launched the App Store just over a year ago, is the hands-down leader in the smartphone application market. It's unclear exactly how much money the company makes from the App Store. But there is no question that the virtual storefront has been a success. In its first year, developers have added more than 50,000 applications and users have downloaded over a billion applications onto iPhones and iPod Touch devices.
And because the service leverages Apple's existing e-commerce platform, iTunes, whatever money Apple generates from selling applications is more than it costs the company to run the service. Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett says there are many parallels between how Apple's App Store is affecting the wireless industry and how iTunes has affected the music industry.
"Apple essentially sucked the intellectual property value out of the music business and turned it into a loss leader for selling iPods," he said in a phone interview. "And they're doing it again in wireless. That's a pretty neat trick. And it's a pretty hard trick to pull off, too."
From BREW to new app store
Verizon is no stranger to running and operating an application store. The company has been offering its traditional cell phone subscribers mobile applications from the Qualcomm BREW platform for years. This business alone generates over a billion dollars a year for Verizon Wireless. John Stratton, vice president of marketing for Verizon, said that new Vcast application store will extend this kind of service to smartphone users.
Since news of the Verizon application store started trickling out a few weeks ago, bloggers and others following the industry have speculated on whether the new store would compete with efforts that some of Verizon's partners, such as Research In Motion and Microsoft, have mounted. These companies along with others including Google's Android community and Nokia are developing their own smartphone application stores.
But John Stratton, vice president of marketing for Verizon, emphasized that the Vcast application store is not meant to compete with these other stores. Rather, it's meant to complement them by offering resources and tools to make it easier for wireless users to access the applications.
The ultimate goal he said is to make it as easy as possible for developers to get their applications in the hands of consumers and to create more channels for accessing this content. This means that applications that have already been approved for RIM's App World store will move through the process as quickly as possible and be ported directly to the Vcast store. The goal is to have most applications approved and on the network within 14 days.
The Vcast store is also meant to make it easier for consumers to discover and pay for the applications they want to buy. For example, the company will leverage its existing Verizon Web portal, which is one of the top 26 most visited sites on the Web. It will allow the current 60 million registered users and new users a place where they can search for, rate, and download applications for their smartphones.
The carrier is also creating open APIs to allow developers to hook into Verizon's billing system so that users can purchase applications with one simple click and pay for the device as part of their wireless bill. It will also provide hooks into other subscriber platforms, such as location-based services, presence, and messaging.
"These are great tools that can help open the audience more widely for application developers," Stratton said. "And it will allow subscribers to easily discover, purchase, and manage their applications."
Indeed, today's billing process for many of the new storefronts that are hitting the market require users to register a credit card or use PayPal to purchase applications.
"That is the single highest barrier to consumption of mobile apps," he said. "By hooking into our billing system, it creates a one-click process to buy an app."
A shifting marketplace
Verizon also sees an opportunity to make money and protect its dominance in the wireless market with its application store. The company has also acknowledged that the market is shifting. Smartphones, which now account for over 40 percent of the new handsets the carrier sells, have changed the game and are a very important factor in which carrier customers choose.
"Consumers are thinking more about what they want to do with their devices," Stratton said. "Our concern as we move from the monolithic BREW platform for features phones to one that is pretty wide open for smartphones, is that there is a greater risk of fragmentation. We don't think that Verizon will solve all the challenges of fragmentation, but we do believe we can help."
The Vcast application store also offers a way for Verizon to maintain some control over which applications make it onto its network. And also provides the company some share of revenue. By contrast, Verizon's rival AT&T has given up a lot of control in its deal with Apple to be the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone. While Apple gets 30 percent of all revenue generated from the sale of applications on the Apple App Store, AT&T gets zero.
AT&T claims it benefits from all the App Store activity because it drives sales of the iPhone, which in turn drives sales of its $30 a month data service. But the reality is that the more popular the iPhone applications become and the more bandwidth each application requires, the more AT&T must spend on upgrading its network to ensure the network can handle the traffic load. Meanwhile, Apple sells more iPhones.
Verizon Wireless doesn't want the same thing to happen to it. It is following Apple's lead and is allowing Vcast application store developers to keep 70 percent of the revenue generated from their applications, while it keeps the remaining 30 percent. Device makers, such as RIM, which is partnering with Verizon on the Vcast store, won't get a cut of the revenue. But Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM, who was at the developer conference, doesn't seem to mind.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for our application developers to create and monetize applications for the BlackBerry," he said. "We will support our own application store worldwide and the Vcast store on Verizon, so that we provide more channels for our developers. It's real simple; for this revenue stream to carry on and thrive, the applications need to be adopted so we can drive more BlackBerry sales. And this makes the carrier a strategic partner."
As for competing directly against Apple and the App Store, RIM's Balsillie said that it's not the volume of applications that matter so much as how valuable those applications are to the consumer.
"About 10 years ago there was a well-known PDA company with 40,000 apps and 100,000 developers," he said. "We had just one application, which turned out to be a very good application. And you see what happened."
Balsillie's story alluded to the rise of RIM and the BlackBerry, whose killer app is pushed e-mail, versus the PDA maker Palm, which relied on session pull e-mail. During the discussion at the developer conference, Balsillie predicted that Verizon's efforts and the trend in the market toward more applications in general will benefit Verizon and companies that work to create useful applications.
"Titillation is phase one of the application market," he said, speaking of the thousands of seemingly useless applications in Apple's App Store. "The next phase will be about enabling richer applications. Instead of downloading 30 or 40 applications, the benchmark for success will be the stickiness of the applications."
Apple's popular App Store has proven that selling mobile applications for smartphones is a hot business, but can all these copycat application stores expect to find the same success as the App Store?
Companies, such as Nokia, Google, LG Electronics, Research In Motion and Microsoft are hoping they can. Since the Apple App Store came on the scene a year ago, these companies have each announced plans for their own application stores.
LG Electronics, the third largest mobile handset maker in the world, is the latest to announce its store. On Tuesday, the South Korean device maker announced it has launched its own application storefront for its phones. The market place, which is initially only available in Asia, has 1,400 applications. The company said it plans to boost that number to 2,000 when it allows access in Europe and South America later this year.
LG hasn't yet set a date for opening its store in the U.S. But there are plenty of other companies launching application stores here. Research In Motion launched its BlackBerry App World store in March. The store only has about 2,000 applications. The company is currently developing a social networking site to help boost adoption of its applications.
Other device makers, such as Palm, are reaching out to the developer community to create applications for its devices. But so far the new Palm Pre, which uses a sophisticated operating system developed specifically for the device called WebOS, only has a handful of applications. Still, consumers have been downloading them in droves.
Google's Android Market has also launched. Google professes it has a long term advantage over the iPhone because it's developer community is more open. And while the store is still young and relatively small today, it will likely have a large following among developers.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its Windows Marketplace for Mobile. And on Tuesday, the company said that the company would be accepting submissions for its application store starting July 27. The company also said that it will support Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 by the end of 2009. The Windows Marketplace for Mobile is expected to launch in the fall.
Even Verizon Wireless is talking about developing an app store for its smartphones. Currently, Verizon offers applications using its VCast service and the BREW platform for its feature-phones. But now the wireless operator is talking about launching an application store just for smartphones. A Verizon Wireless executive recently told the blog GigaOm in an interview that the company is developing a marketplace that will aggregate applications from all the other storefronts from four different developer communities: Windows Mobile, Palm, Android, and BlackBerry.
And there are still other application stores in the works. Nokia has launched its own application store using its Ovi platform. And the Symbian Foundation is also working on a developer program to get more applications on the market for consumers with smartphones running the Symbian operating system.
All of these companies are hoping to tap into the success that has been demonstrated by Apple's App Store. A year after it launched, Apple claims the App Store now has over 65,000 applications and that users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion apps. The software developer community has also exploded with over 100,000 developers creating applications for the iPhone.
With statistics like this, it's easy to see why Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO of Apple, is not worried about competition from others developing their own application stores.
"With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up," he said in a statement.
Indeed it will be hard to catch Apple now. But it's easy to see why all these players want a piece of the action. Apple has proven that applications are a powerful differentiator for devices. In fact, analysts expect Apple to post better than expected results for its iPhone sales in the quarter that ended in June.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research note Tuesday that he expects that Apple sold 5 million iPhones in the June quarter. The Wall Street consensus is around 4 million.
The App Store is seen as one of the major reasons why the iPhone has been so successful. But can other application storefronts replicate the kind of success that Apple has experienced?
It will be tough. While Apple has made it easy to download and pay for applications, and the company has made it attractive for developers to develop for the iPhone, the real success of the App Store is likely attributed to the fact that it operates through Apples e-commerce service, iTunes.
Virtual stores have always existed for phones. But because so many people were already using iTunes and were already familiar with the interface, it made it that much easier for people to buy mobile applications using the store. Not to mention the fact that these customers also already had a billing relationship with Apple, which has also made it easy for developers to monetize their applications.
But even if all these other companies can't catch Apple, the fact that they are developing these storefronts and encouraging application development should drive new services and interesting applications for consumers.
LAS VEGAS--Full-length TV shows are coming to BlackBerry devices as QuickPlay Media has announced it will offer a new TV download service for the smartphones via the just new Research In Motion applications store.
BkackBerry Bold
(Credit: Research In Motion)QuickPlay is one of the first companies to offer an application through RIM's BlackBerry App World virtual store. RIM announced the new applications store Wednesday morning. And co-CEO Mike Lazaridis is expected to show off the new storefront during his keynote speech Wednesday here at the CTIA Wireless 2009 trade show.
The QuickPlay video service called Primetime2Go will cost $7.99 a month. It will provide full episodes of popular TV shows from several TV networks including NBC, MTV Networks, CBS, and the CW. (CNET News is owned by CBS.)
As previously reported, the service will only download shows over a Wi-Fi connection. And currently the service will only be available on the BlackBerry Bold, which is sold by AT&T and the BlackBerry Curve 8900, which is sold by T-Mobile USA. The service will likely be available on future BlackBerry devices that also run the company's latest version of its operating system, Mark Hyland, vice president of marketing said.
The only other requirement for the service is that users must have an SD memory card for the phone. The Bold comes with a 2GB card and the 8900 has a 1 GB card, which Hyland said can provide about five hours of recording time.
For now the TV shows that are downloaded will not have advertisements in them. But Hyland said this may change as the service evolves.
There are already several mobile TV services available for phones. Apple's iTunes store delivers full-length TV shows. But users must pay on a per-show basis instead of a subscription. Qualcomm's MediaFlo offers live TV programming. And MobiTV, which is available through a variety of operators, delivers a mix of full-length TV shows, live programming, and made for mobile video. MobiTV has developed a special application for business users that tailors business news and information and is available on the BlackBerry Bold. It will soon be offered on other BlackBerry handsets such as the BlackBerry Storm.
Even though there is no shortage of options for watching TV on phones, the service has been slow to take off. But experts believe that mobile TV is on the rise and will grow over the next few years. Of course, the economic downturn could affect adoption. Hyland said his company is conscientious about consumers looking for value.
"Of course we understand there is concern over the economy," he said. "That's why we priced it at $7.99. So for the cost of two lattes in a month people can have access to great programming. And we think that's a good value."
We've barely unpacked our bags from GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and we're on the road again to Las Vegas for CTIA Wireless, the U.S. trade show and conference held every spring where the biggest and most influential players in the U.S. mobile market gather.
While there will be some cell phones announced at this year's show, most of the excitement will center on software applications and the virtual storefronts that are popping up to distribute these new applications. Since the success of Apple's App Store, which provides easy access to third-party applications for iPhones, other companies have jumped on the bandwagon announcing their own application stores.
Everyone from Google to Microsoft to Nokia to Research In Motion has announced plans for a new application store. And at this year's CTIA, some of these new app stores will come to life. RIM is expected to announce that its BlackBerry AppWorld is open for business, and Microsoft will start showing off its Marketplace for the first time.
But application markets aren't the only thing that will be talked about. Carriers like Verizon and Clearwire will also be touting faster broadband wireless networks that will help make these applications a reality. And of course handset makers will be showing off new products, some of which have already been announced, such as the Palm Pre.
But this year's spring CTIA Wireless show will likely be smaller than in years past. The economic downturn has taken its toll on the mobile market. Even Nokia, the world's largest and strongest maker of cell phones, has slashed expectations for 2009. And the company has already begun laying off employees and closing facilities to cut costs.
... Read moreResearch In Motion's new mobile application store is set to launch on April 1 at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas, BusinessWeek reported this week.
Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, which makes the popular BlackBerry devices, is slated to give a keynote address on the opening day of the trade show and conference. And the company is expected to announce the new application store there.
The BlackBerry application store, which will be called BlackBerry App World, was announced in October 2008. And it is one of several application stores that have been announced to take on Apple's App Store for the iPhone. Nokia, Google, Microsoft, and Palm have all announced plans to offer their own application stores.
Even though there are more people using Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft phones today than there are iPhone users, Apple has essentially run away with the downloadable software market by linking the storefront to its iTunes software and music store. Developers have flocked to the Apple App store and there are currently more than 25,000 applications in the App Store.
Success of the RIM application store will largely depend on whether it can get application developers to develop applications for the BlackBerry devices. RIM has already been working with many established developers and has offered software kits to these developers for years. But it's also planning to be aggressive in helping developers make money from applications. And the company plans to only take a 20 percent cut of any applications that are sold in the virtual store. Apple takes a 30 percent cut.
Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software for Nokia, talks about the new Ovi application store at a press conference in Barcelona.
(Credit: Marguerite Reardon CNET News/CBS Interactive)BARCELONA--Nokia is taking on smartphone rival Apple with its own version of an application store.
On Monday, the world's largest cell phone maker, which has been losing market share at the high end to devices like Apple's iPhone, announced here at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 that it will follow Apple and a few other handset makers in launching a virtual storefront where developers can upload applications and consumers can easily download them.
The news of Nokia's Ovi Store is hardly a shock. Several news agencies had reported that the company was expected to announce the store here at MWC.
Nokia said at the press conference that the store will be open for business starting in May. Nokia's flagship smartphone, the N97, will be the first Nokia device to have the application store software pre-integrated. The N97, which was announced in December, goes on sale in June.
The company added that other Nokia phone users, including those using S40 and S60 phones, will be able to download the application storefront starting in May.
Developers, who will get a 70 percent cut of revenue from the store, will be able to start loading applications to the Ovi.com Web site starting in March. Several content owners have already started working on applications for the store, including AccuWeather, Facebook, Rough Guides, Lonely Planet, Electronic Arts, Fox Mobile, and MySpace.
Nokia says it will eventually make the application store available to all of its Nokia phones, and it will begin rolling it out globally in the fall.
Nokia's announcement follows the big success of Apple's App Store, which provides applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Other smartphone makers have also jumped on the bandwagon with their own application stores. Google launched one for its Android phones and Research In Motion plans to have one up and running for its BlackBerry devices. Microsoft, maker of the Windows Mobile operating system, is also expected to announce its application "bazaar" at Mobile World Congress this week, too.
But Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software for Nokia, said at a press conference here Monday that the Ovi application store is different from the others.
"This is not just a place to find applications," he said. "It's a smart store. That is not just for smartphones. It actually suggests things you might like and adds social location dynamics to show you relevant applications. And it shows you what your friends have bought. And it changes the inventory based on where you are."
For one, the store is not limited to providing applications for smartphones. Eventually, all Nokia devices will be able to access some applications from the store.
"It's not only about smartphones anymore," he said. "We must address the range of devices we have in the market from the high end to the low end. This is not necessarily about getting the 2 percent of mobile users who are already using applications to switch. But it's about addressing the 98 percent that will soon start using applications."
More importantly, Savander said Nokia plans to provide a more relevant and contextualized experience through its store than its competitors have done. For example, Nokia will use GPS technology built into phones to provide location relevant content.
The store will also track applications that users are downloading and it will be intelligent enough to suggest other applications that might be of interest. And finally, it will also provide relevant applications based on what friends have downloaded.
New mobile app stores launched by Apple, Google, and Research In Motion could shift the balance of power in the mobile market away from wireless operators and toward device and platform developers.
Until recently, wireless operators served as the gatekeepers of what content and applications made it onto mobile phones. Now mobile platform developers such as Apple, Google, and Research In Motion are providing marketplaces where consumers can get access to thousands of new applications tailored specifically for each of these device platforms.
On Tuesday, Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, became the latest device maker to announce it will offer an application storefront branded specifically for its own operating system.
Earlier this summer, Apple made headlines with the launch of the App Store, an online marketplace of games and other software designed to run on the iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
More than 3,000 applications are currently available, and Apple has said that users downloaded more than 100 million applications between the site's launch on July 11 and the beginning of September.
Google followed with its own application store for phones that use its Android operating system. The first phone, called the G1, will go on sale Wednesday on T-Mobile's network in the U.S. And the on-device application marketplace will also go live with it.
For developers, these new storefronts should make it easier to develop and distribute applications. For consumers, it means more choice in applications. But for operators, it means ceding some control over what applications make it onto their phones to other companies.
"The big picture trend is that mobile carriers are playing less of a central role in the marketing and distribution of individual applications," said Charles Golvin, a principal analyst with Forrester Research. "It's analogous to what happened on the Web. People initially accepted the walled garden of AOL, but as they became more skilled users they found that to be too restrictive."
To a certain extent, wireless operators appear to have accepted the trend. Verizon Wireless, which has developed a new open network initiative to speed up certification of devices and applications running on its network, claims that it is happy to allow new applications and services on its network, since ultimately it will drive network usage.
"We want users to bring any device or application to the network that they want," Eric Reed, vice president, Market Issues and Policy for Verizon, said during a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Association Industry Forum in Las Vegas on Tuesday. "That is what our open development initiative is all about."
But it's clear that carriers don't want to give free reign to application developers to put anything on their network. Wireless operators still insist there needs to be certification.
"We also have a responsibility to make sure that these applications and devices don't crash the network or hurt the user experience," Reed added.
That said, Forrester's Golvin believes that wireless carriers see the writing on the wall, and they realize they must be more open to new applications if they hope to drive usage on their networks.
"It's true that the role of the carrier as the key distributor of applications is dissipating," he said. "But the upside is that these same operators still stand to make money on their data plans."The danger for wireless operators is that by ceding application distribution to handset makers or platform developers, they are essentially making themselves into dumb pipe providers. This is a wireless operator's worst fear and one they have already begun to see play out in the broadband market.
But Reed of Verizon said he still expects wireless consumers to come to Verizon for applications, too.
"There is not a one size fits all solution here," he said. "There will be multiple business models."
RIM has also acknowledged that there will be multiple ways for consumers to get applications. And it will continue to work with its carrier partners to provide on-device application centers that are created by the carriers to help promote application downloads. These centers will allow each carrier to offer a catalog on the device so that customers can discover and download applications.
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