Verizon Wireless: Get It Now downloads hit 70 million

SAN DIEGO—Verizon Wireless officials said at Qualcomm’s BREW Developers Conference here that total downloads on its Get It Now data and content service have reached more than 70 million since its national launch in late 2002, up from a total of 8.5 million as of spring 2003.

“There were 34 million of those downloads just between January and May this year, so you don’t need to be a mathematician to see how and when the growth was really happening,” said Jim Straight, vice president of data and multimedia products at VerizonWireless.

The carrier’s Get It Now virtual store holds a library of 520 applications, including games, productivity tools, information services, ringtones, wallpapers and other applications. As Verizon Wireless begins this summer to make good on its plan to roll ou CDMA 1X EV-DO service nationwide, those applications will be joined by video services.

“With EV-DO, video will be the lead product,” said Paul Palmieri, executive director of business development and programming at Verizon Wireless. “With our upgrade, we have a competitive window versus other carriers, and we want to exploit it.” Palmieri declined to further specify a roll-out schedule for new video services.

Get It Now’s online gaming library, called getGAMES, led the carrier’s recent surge in downloads, according to Straight. GetGAMES, which offers 35 multiplayer games and other gaming applications, experienced 12 million downloads from January to May this year.

There still was more success with the service’s instant message offering, getIM, which allows customers to send and receive instant messages on their wireless phones using pre-existing accounts with any of the three major instant message providers. The getIM client has been downloaded 464,000 times since December 2003.

Verizon Wireless officials also offered BREW developers some advice about approaching carriers with applications that strain device memory. Ray Taylor, executive director of consumer multimedia services for Verizon Wireless, said the carrier wants to see applications that are conscious of precious device memory, even as more devices with larger memory become available. Taylor also said Verizon Wireless is more interested in the quality of applications than the quantity.

“We want to see fewer, better applications,” he said. “Don’t bring us 12 of them, just three or four of your best ones.”