O2 UK Opens Up New App Store To Limited Subscriber Base

The UK carrier O2 UK has opened up a new mobile application storefront today that allows developers to upload their apps to a small community of users that review, rate and provide feedback to the developers. The open platform serves as a testing ground for O2, by being able to see which applications fair well on a limited basis before rolling them out to the larger subscriber base. Matthaus Krzykowski at VentureBeat wrote about the new storefront, and compared it to T-Mobile USA’s recently launched web2go platform that provides developers direct access to its customer base based on predetermined guidelines. The two platforms are perhaps a sign that carriers are beginning to open up, and are seeing the value in eliminating the barriers to working with developers, much like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has done with the iPhone, and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has done with the Android Market. However, all of these storefronts are very new, and it will be interesting to see what really ends up being successful for developers, and easy to use for consumers.

VentureBeat reports that the community is called appropriately called Litmus, and if it is successful, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) will launch it internationally across its 24 markets. O2 has 18 million subscribers, but the entire network has a total of 220 million subscribers. More details about the program were included in a Q&A with James Parton, who heads up Litmus. He said that developers have two choices: they can upload free apps, as a test, or provide apps for sale. Once uploaded, the application goes into moderation: “We don

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post