Mobile Application Stores and saying no to premium numbers
This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was all about Application Stores. Finally all the big names in the mobile world are responding to Apple’s success with the iPhone application store. It’s about time too, but as to whether the responses from O2, Android, Nokia etc. are more than just lip service, only time will tell.
It should be good news for anyone who creates mobile applications and as we’ll soon have our very own mobile application that you can download for free, it should be good news for us too. Application stores are just another way for us to tell people how to not pay for dialing 0870 and 0845 numbers.
The only question for us, and it’s a big question, is whether the mobile operators like O2 will allow an application like ours into their store. Remember that the main purpose of our application is to deprive mobile operators from the profit they currently make from 20p/minute 08 numbers which could be dialed for free using our application.
GIven the experience of similar applications on Apple’s store I would guess the answer would be no. However, I attended Mobile Monday yesterday where representatives from both O2 and Vodafone seemed to be saying that their commitment to remaining open meant that they would not be exercising any editorial control over the type of applications in their stores. It’s fantastic to see an operator speak like that - whether that view is shared with others in the company is another matter. None the less an example was given of a VOIP client (voice over internet protocol - i.e. low cost calls from your mobile via a wireless network- serious competition for a mobile network) which was allowed to remain on the Vodafone developers site (Betavine). So they do seem to be walking the talk.
Once the say no to premium mobile application is up and running, you’ll be able to download it directly to your phone, and I’ll put it up on O2 developer site for a laugh, let’s see if they take it down :)