Vodafone Enters Apps Market

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Vodafone announced plans in May 2009 to launch its own mobile application store, aiming to capture a share of the market opened up by Apple’s App Store, Nokia’s Ovi store and Google’s Android Marketplace by letting developers bill customers directly through their phone bill and build location-aware apps. Unlike its rivals, Vodafone pitched the store as usable on any device and any operating system across its 289 million global customers, taking a 30% cut of developer charges, though at launch it only supported Symbian’s Series 60 platform and phones running the Opera browser, with Windows Mobile and Android support planned and no prospect of reaching iPhone users due to Apple’s own certification process.