War on Mobile App Store Front soon…

I was at Nokia Forum yesterday in New Delhi while it was being organised by Nokia parallely in Malaysia too. Nokia has started organising these forums/ code camps regularly now to connect with third party developers who come out with very innovative applications every now and then from around the world.

Mostly present there were talking about how different manufacturers like Research In Motion (RIM), Google Inc., Microsoft and Nokia etc. are all tryting to get a pie of the app store market share, a trend started by Apple. Most of them agreed that Apple actually told the world that phone is not just for talking or sms but a lot more then that, through it’s iPhone and the app store. However in India, iPhone is not as popular in absence of 3G networks.

Now, other companies like RIM and Nokia are going to leverage that customer knowledge (imparted originally by Apple)  to monetise the huge opportunity available now as Nokia and RIM both have far greater market share in India then Apple’s iPhone.

Research in Motion (RIM) in October 2008 announced two major distribution initiatives for smartphone applications for its BlackBerry handheld, including an online store called BlackBerry Application Storefront and an application center. RIM began accepting applications and content from developers for inclusion in the storefront in December and the store is scheduled to launch this month. The storefront will allow developers to set their own prices for applications. RIM is working with PayPal, an online payment service, to provide consumers with a way to pay for applications from BlackBerry smartphones.

Nokia is launching their app store on OVI starting first from western world by end of first quarter and later entering in India by around mid of this year. Nokia is also tying up with various payment platforms including credit card payment gateways online for cutomers to pay for applications.

A key question for technology executives is what value, if any, do these app stores provide to business users? So far, experts say, the usefulness for business appears to be limited. But with the influx of new players in the market, the number of business applications might increase.