TELECOM INDUSTRY leaders including Nokia, China Mobile and Microsoft raced to announce online software stores yesterday in a drive to find new sources of revenue and satisfy consumers. The success of Apple’s AppStore, which lets iPhone users download thousands of small software programmes to personalise the way they play games, listen to music or find directions, has inspired admiration and envy in many rivals.
The industry is also embracing open operating systems such as Google’s Android and the LiMo consortium’s Linux platform, which are attractive to innovative developers, at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the industry’s biggest gathering in Barcelona.
Nokia said it would open an online store for software and media under its “Ovi” brand in nine countries in May, with partners including social networking sites Facebook and MySpace and Microsoft also announced a revamped online store.
China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile carrier by subscribers, told the congress daily freesheet it planned to launch its mobile market applications store in two phases within the year.
Korean phone maker LG Electronics and France Telecom’s Orange said they also planned similar stores, while Samsung Electronics and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion have already announced such plans.
Research firm Strategy Analytics forecasts the value of the mobile content market – including downloadable games, ringtones, wallpapers, video, mobile TV, text alerts and mobile web browsing – will grow 18 per cent to $67 billion (€52.4 billion) this year.
Phone makers also rushed to announce plans for new phones based on Google’s open-source Android operating system, which is attracting a large community of software developers.
Google and LiMo, based on the increasingly popular open-source Linux software, are challenging the licence-fee model used by Microsoft, already waning in popularity in the face of competition from Apple and Research in Motion.
Samsung, the world’s second-biggest cellphone maker after Nokia, said it would launch at least three Android phones and at least one LiMo phone this year, and China’s Huawei said it aimed to have two or three Android phones on the market in 2009.
Software giant Microsoft scored one important victory yesterday, however, by announcing a deal with Korea’s LG Electronics, whose design phones, including the LG Prada and the Chocolate, have helped it grow in a shrinking market.
Microsoft said LG, the world’s third-largest cellphone maker, would use Windows software in most of its new smartphones.
While the overall cellphone market is expected to shrink around 10 per cent in 2009 as consumers rein in spending, analysts say the smartphone market should grow about 10 to 20 per cent in 2009. – (Reuters)
