Telecoms Unite to Challenge Apple's App Store

By Allen Tsai | Mon Feb 15, 2010 6:05 am

The world's largest telecoms have formed an alliance to build an online store that will offer games and applications to all smartphone users in an effort to compete with Apple's successful apps store.

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The group of 24 operators said the alliance, called the Wholesale Applications Community, aims unite a "fragmented marketplace" and retake the initiative from Apple and Nokia, which have their own popular app stores.

Seen as an important component of smartphones, app stores currently aren't accessible across different handset platforms.

The move is supported by three of the world's largest handset makers -- LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson -- all four major U.S. carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile -- and international players Orange of France, Deutsche Telekom of Germany, NTT Docomo of Japan, Vodafone and China Mobile, for a combined three billion customers around the world.

Posted In: Apple (1097) | iTunes (37)

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