Bharti Airtel To Launch App Store On Feb 10

[savramesh 37]

Source

The concept of App Stores (application stores), which first became popular in the USA when Apple introduced the same for its iPhone, appears to be entering India in a big way with market leader Bharti Airtel now set to launch its App Stores on February 10, reports the Economic Times.

Recently Aircel had tied up with Infosys to launch its App Stores. Idea too is reportedly working towards launching App Stores.

Research firm Gartner estimates the global application store market to be worth $ 6.2 billion in 2010 with total downloads exceeding 4.5 billion. In 2009 revenues from app stores were at $ 4.2 billion and by 2013 the figure is expected to rise to $ 29.5 billion.

The concept of App Stores is mainly to gain an increased pie of the VAS market. Globally handset manufacturers have used this concept to gain additional revenues from VAS. Apart from Apple, Nokia, BlackBerry, Samsung and Sony Ericsson too have presence in the App Store space.

[manishag 17]

i don't think so it can be BIG hit because in india market is too much price cautious. most of the apps are already available in the local market and new apps will also be available then who is going to spend on that.

[savramesh 37]

Bharti teams up with 23 telcos for apps mkt

NEW DELHI: India’s largest telco by subscribers and revenues, Bharti Airtel has joined forces with 23 other global communication giants to challenge the dominance of handsetmakers, especially that of Apple, in the mobile applications (apps) space. “The inspiration for this initiative might have come from them (handsetmakers), but our platform is agnostic to devices. We are attempting to build a global ecosystem of developers and together, these 24 operators have access to over 3 billion customers around the world. The global GSM mobile association (called GSMA) had come up with this plan and some of the world’s top device manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have already extended their support to this initiative by operators build an open platform for mobile applications,” said Bharti Airtel’s CEO Sanjay Kapoor. The Bharti Airtel head, who is also on board of the GSMA, dispelled analysts’ predictions of failure and said that all telcos who are part of this alliance were committed to working together to build this global platform.

Mobile apps have been a rave globally ever since Apple launched its App Store in 2008. Last month, Apple said that its apps have seen over 3 billion downloads. Other handsetmakers such as Nokia which have joined the fray over the last 12 months are also seeing big business opportunities in this space. For instance, BlackBerry’s app store that is only a few months old already boasts of over 4,000 apps. Ditto with Google’s Android that as already crossed the 20,000 apps figure.

The rationale behind the 24 largest mobile operators joining hands on the apps space is that service providers have lost billions of dollars in revenues to handsetmakers which have allowed independent developers to access their platforms to build tens and thousands of apps that have been monetized. Other members of this alliance include AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, SingTel, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone.

Research firm Gartner, which tracks IT and telecom across the world, has said that app stores globally had raked in over $4.2 billion in revenues last year while predicting that this would increase to $29.5 billion by 2013. With app stores opening up a bonanza of revenue opportunities for developers and handsetmakers, several mobile firms such as Vodafone Group, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T France Telecom and even Bharti Airtel have joined in to tap into this space. For instance, last month Bharti Airtel had announced that its app store had gone live with over 1,200 applications making it the first Indian telco to attempt replicating the highly successful business model of Apple, the pioneer in this space.

Mr Kapoor also pointed out at the Wholesale Applications Community aims to unite a fragmented marketplace and create an open industry platform that benefits everybody—from applications developers and network operators to mobile phone users themselves. “It is possible that the individual mobile app stores of operators may the backend and can be linked together by this global platform,” he added.

[savramesh 37]

Airtel App Central Crosses 2.5 Million Downloads

Airtel App Central, was launched just over a month ago in India. Since the launch, it has accounted for over 2.5 million downloads. This is what the data for the past 30 days suggests.

Airtel was soon followed by Vodafone who went live with its own App Store last week. Reliance too has joined the fray and is readying its own App Store. The Airtel store, however, was the first of its kind in India. The surprising bit about the Airtel App Store is the fact that the maximum number of applications downloaded were from smaller cities and not large metros!

The most downloaded applications included social networking and utilities. Airtel added that its users were downloading 1 app per second in the 30 days since the existence of the app store. The Airtel App Central has now over 1,500 apps available for download and supports over 550 devices categorized under 25 customer categories. Apps are available for as low as Re. 1/day with options to pay on a weekly, monthly or one-time basis.

To check out the Airtel app store, navigate to the Airtel Live page on your phone browser. You can SMS app to 54321 to receive the URL via a text message.

[raccoon 53]

Hehe... seems subscribers from larger cities have wised up on Airtel's cheating methods, at least to some extent. 

The more you interact with it, the more opportunities it has to con you.