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Carriers Worldwide to Launch New App Store, Combat Apple's Dominance

by Terrence O'Brien on February 15, 2010 at 02:20 PM

How many app stores does the world need? Well, if you ask Verizon, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, LG, and about 20 other cell phone carriers and manufacturers, at least one more. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, a whopping 27 companies, claiming 3 billion customers between them, announced that they would be collaborating on an "open international applications platform."

The initiative clearly has Apple's iPhone platform in its cross-hairs, and, at launch, will have the largest customer base of any such outlet. The companies hope that by providing a single place for developers to hawk their wares, they can reduce the amount of fragmentation in the marketplace, and create a single "wholesale" shop that subscribes to a set of open standards.

The platform, however, faces an enormous hurdle in figuring out how to serve such a large variety of handset platforms and data carriers. Additionally, the companies are currently split between two competing standards that must be combined into a single governing platform over the next year.

Only time will tell how successful the initiative will be, but, considering all the obstacles and the well established competition, we'd say they face an uphill battle. [From: MocoNews]

Tags: app store, AppStore, lg, ntt docomo, NttDocomo, samsung, Verizon

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