UK mobile retail giant Carphone Warehouse will launch a Java application that will serve as a storefront. The application will be on sale as an over-the-air download next week, according to the article, but CW is “now in talks with major handset companies to pre-install it and vastly increase the potential user base”. The portal will provide “news, content (games, tones, videos etc), chat, shopping, betting and football alerts”, and the company anticipates that it will link to content within the operator’s portal to avoid conflict with them. Carphone Warehouse has already had a crack at selling mobile content on delivery cards and on a WAP portal.
Carphone Warehouse seems to understand that one of the big issues of mobile content is simple navigation. “Via WAP it takes a lot of work to find information, while text alerts can cost a fortune as well as being very slow to send the messages. Our service gives (football) scores 60 seconds after the event and requires one £9.99 subscription for a year”.
The article only mentions the UK, but Carphone Warehouse has 1,921 stores in ten countries.
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