Image Source: wirelessinfo.com
Some of the world’s largest telecommunications companies have teamed up to create an apps store of sorts that they say will rival Apple’s and those of other smartphone makers.
AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and 24 other companies have formed what they’re calling the Wholesale Applications Community, they announced Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics also are part of the group.
That ‘s a small excerpt from a CNN article yesterday on this new mobile app store initiative by a whole bunch of ‘major players ‘ in the mobile arena. The thing that makes this hilarious to me is that all of the players behind this move are not ‘major ‘ at all when it comes to mobile apps. They are the folks who could never tell their asses from their elbows for years and years when it comes to mobile apps and how to get users interested in them.
This is the same utterly clueless bunch of folks who made it so easy for Apple to come in with the iPhone OS platform and become the dominant provider of mobile apps just about overnight. Just a month ago, we saw reports from Gartner and others showing Apple accounted for well over 90% of all mobile apps sales in 2009. Everyone else combined for quite a bit less than 10% of mobile app sales.
Now I ‘m not saying the App Store is perfect or invincible. It has many flaws, including some really big ones that we complain about often here, and it ‘s certainly possible that it can be challenged. I think the Android OS may provide increasingly interesting competition and perhaps others will as well.
But of all the people, companies, platforms that could get it together and bring serious competition to the iPhone App Store, this new alliance has to be THE most unlikely source of any real challenge at all.
AT&T, Sprint and other carrier companies? Please “ these are the guys whose apps used to be forced upon us on Windows Mobile and other platforms. The apps that most people ‘s memory of would start and end with the thought ‘how do I get this crap off my phone ‘. Just looking through the names of members of this alliance is like looking at a list of has-beens and never-weres in the mobile apps arena.
What do you all think? Am I missing the boat here? Should this new initiative strike fear into the heart of everyone in charge of the App Store? (I laughed when typing that).
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TAGS: AT&T, Sprint
