Application stores go mass market

The success of Apple's pioneering App Store was felt throughout this year's Congress, even if Apple's physical presence wasn't. Both Nokia's 'Ovi Store' and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 'Marketplace' were unveiled as contenders to Apple and Google's existing offerings. Nokia's play will differ by delivering location-aware and socially recommended content while Microsoft instead chose to tout figures; some 20,000 existing Windows Mobile apps are expected to be available at launch. While few details are known of Microsoft's store, Nokia's platform opens out two big opportunities for the ecosystem. Firstly, by treating S40 and the mid-range as equal customers to smartphone users on the Ovi Store, they have shifted the focus from a "me too" race to a mass-market offering that other vendors will need to replicate. Secondly, to help the mass-market proposition, Nokia is tackling operator and billing issues head-on. As with traditional premium content delivery, Nokia will offer operator-billing alongside credit cards, allowing the operators to take an initial cut of the purchase price. To facilitate this, Nokia stated at Congress that it has agreements in place with the operators of each and every European launch country and is willing to provide additional operator-branded store pages and/or applications. As other vendors follow suit and extend their App Store content to all media – much of which treads on the hallowed grounds of 'premium content' for operator revenue – this invitation will come at a welcome time for operators who are looking to avoid the 'dumb pipe' scenario.

(This article is part of a series of follow-ups on Mobile World Congress 2009 from the GSMA Intelligence team.)