The Apple Effect: Orange App shop !
Talk about the sound impact of industrial developments, and you’ll see the Apple effect spreading everywhere. It all began with the App Store, and suddenly, Microsoft, Android, Nokia, and even UIM & Blackberry came out with their app shops, to compete with the app store.
Orange is the latest contender in the line-up, as the company plans to launch their official app shop named the Orange Application Shop, in a few weeks time. It will be operative in UK as well as France, while the operations for other parts of the globe have not been fixed yet.
Initially, the Orange App shop will feature only cell phone apps for limited handsets, which would include the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Sony Ericsson W980, Nokia N96, and the HTC Touch Diamond.
However, despite the low count of handset supported, there’ll be room for over 300apps in the app shop, for the above mentioned 4 handsets.
As far as the interest of the publishers is concerned, they’ll obviously have a greater share of profit, as this is just the beginning. As a result, big shots such as Gameloft, PacketVideo, AFP and the likes of them, have decided to join the Orange app shop community, and this app shop will be known as the OAP in short.
What’s more, the applications featured in the Orange App shop would be available at starting cost of €6 and would go up to €12 at the most, making them affordable to buy, even for the customers.
So, the smart-phone boom is on the roll, and only time can tell where the Apple would effect lead the industry to. Sony-Ericsson is not to be counted out either, and it is expected that Palm and others may also come up with similar ideas of launching own app shops, even in this recession-hit market.
Survival is the only way out today, and even the big guns are thriving hard to survive in the competitive world today. After all, who would have thought that Google would be able to outsmart Microsoft one day hitting the $100 billion dollar mark first, in terms of revenues, leaving the legendary Microsoft behind at only about $75 billions!
Let’s wait and wait what the OAS has got to offer, and how would it compete against the App Store and the Blackberry App World.