While the early app store battles are taking place in developed markets, where operators and mobile suppliers search for new revenue streams, the mass uptake for the new model should evolve in rapidly growing mobile economies like India.
Nokia knows this well – it has already launched Ovi services specifically created for Indian businesses, and plans a store to showcase these; while this week it announced a major Latin American move to make its web apps ubiquitous, signing with pan-regional giant America Movil to introduce Nokia Messaging in seven countries by the end of 2009.
Now other players are getting the message, and as well as Nokia, Apple and RIM are said to be planning customized versions of their stores for the Indian market. According to the country’s Economic Times, all three want to attract India’s huge developer community as well as make their devices central to the country’s move towards web services as the foundation of significant business change and broadband availability.
Nokia has launched the vanilla Ovi Store but will move to a locally customized version by year end. “We are currently tying up with Indian developers to roll out local applications,” Nokia India’s director of marketing, Vineet Taneja, told the newspaper. “The idea is to create a business model for apps in India so that the developers too can monetize their work”, with the key focuses being location-based services, music, entertainment, business and utilities.
RIM is also reported to be readying an Indian version of BlackBerry App World to attract local programmers, and its main focuses will be “productivity, connectivity, travel, instant messaging, navigation as well as some industry specific applications”, says the report. And where app stores are evolving, Apple will not be far behind, despite the limited takeup of the iPhone so far, given a market that is almost entirely prepaid and unsubsidized. This could ensure that Apple will target business markets, where the iPhone could have a better chance, with a tailored store.