By It appears Vodafone wants to get in on the highly-profitable success that is the Android Market by creating and controlling their own version for their Android handsets. As part of the Vodafone 360 experience, the Android App Shop will be available in select European markets initially, and eventually should roll out to Vodafone’s entire coverage area.
Apps will be vetted through a submission process managed by Arvata Mobile in Germany, and the App Shop should see it’s initial launch in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. Apps will be charged directly to the customer’s cell phone bill rather than paid for through a separate process as is the case with ye olde Android Market, all in the name of Vodafone getting a 30% cut of all sales.
It seems more and more carriers are moving towards proprietary market apps, a move that is worrisome to say the least. Along with the blocking of unsigned apps on some carriers and handsets, this seems fundamentally opposite to what Android is as an open-source platform. Of course, along with being open-source also comes the right and ability for carriers and manufacturers to adapt and modify the existing OS to suit their needs.
[via IntoMobile]
Well… if it gets the Market into countries where it currently is not available, then great news…
Do you expect any less? Europe as a whole is very socialist in their views as well as governing structure and policies. This doesn’t surprise me in the least bit. Upsetting yes, surprising, no.
Nice, now we also have market fragmentation as well as OS fragmentation. This is not a good thing IMO. Now I have to submit apps like 6 times to many different places?
Oh wait, probably some company will now also try to cash in by “distributing” your app for you to multiple places…lol.
hmm maybe I should start that up…charge 10%…
there is another possibility with this, carriers might be more interested in android phones, since they can also make money out of android apps.
Darkseider:
How can a private company taking advantage be described as “socialist”?? What a bizarre comment.
@elat Because that’s what a quasi-socialist conutry does. It’s government and in turn its’ business practices tend to go in that direction. Gov’t tells everyone whats “good for them” then tells businesses what’s good for them, in turn the business tells its’ customers whats good for them by eliminating choice and spoon feeding its’ customers. Kinda like Apple.
It’s this type of fragmentation that will destroy android’s open philosophy, but if it is to succeed it also needs carriers to see value opportunities, of which app market control could be a big earner. Bit of a catch 22 really, but that’s capitalism for you.
In my opinion, this fragmentation of the app market by carriers has been caused by Google’s slowness to implement the payment of apps in the official market by simply adding the cost of the app to the users monthly phone bill. If they did this and offered the carriers a small percentage of their profits for doing so then the carriers would have less motivation to start their own app stores. I’m sure this was mentioned as being in the works by Google a while back, shame to see they are loosing out because of it.
How can expanding the demographic the android phones can reach be considered bad? You can easily port one app to both markets, or all markets.
This will only help and exapand the growth of android.
LOL the socialist stuff is really cool 8-)
By the way, Apple is from America… so the USA seem to be pretty socialist as well? Yay.
First and foremost I wouldn’t cry about this whole ordeal (yet). Maybe they’ll just have their own Marketplace in addition to the Android Market. If that’s the case, that would be pretty good, since Google still has not managed to add other methods of payment to the Android Market. (And credit cards aren’t as common in Europe as they are in America.)
If they do decide to kill off the Android Market, THAT would be upsetting. And not only that but also a really stupid decision IMHO.
The issue is less with companies creating their own markets for profit or to facilitate app purchases, but rather in these carrier app markets having a screening process that will only allow certain apps into the market. A good thing when you don’t want to deal with 300 new soundboards every day, but not so great when you consider the limitations it puts on the freedom of some developers.
This isn’t a good thing as there will be a lot of apps that only some people can get.
No thanks, I’ll stick with the normal marketplace cheers