MWC: Tapping into the App Store craze

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Handset manufacturers and software providers are forging ahead into the application store market. At Mobile World Congress both Nokia and Microsoft joined Google and Apple in the app marketplace, moves that give carriers more content options than ever before. But the stage is also being set for a potential showdown if service providers decide they too want in on the app store movement.

At least one vendor is trying to tap into that pent-up demand for a carrier-centric application marketplace. At MWC, Amdocs introduced its version of the app store, hosted white-label platform operators can brand and call their own. Called Amdocs App Store, the mobile portal cuts out the middleman and lets service providers and their third-party developers design, sell and profit from their own apps. Service providers have a leg up in their ownership of the customer experience, but the Web is quickly giving others a way to circumvent this relationship, ultimately pushing many consumers away from their service providers’ branded portal to off-portal sites, said Rebecca Prudhomme, Amdocs product marketing. Nearly 70% of all content-based transactions happen off portal in Europe and 40% or higher are done off-portal in North America, she said.

“For the service provider, this creates a big challenge and huge opportunity,” Prudhomme said. “On the challenge side, we see service providers at risk of losing control or ownership of that customer experience. If I move off portal, I’m not an eyeball on my service provider’s branded portal anymore. As that traffic moves more and more off portal, that problem is magnified. It will marginalize service providers as a transport pipe, a dumb pipe. Service providers are interested in engaging with their customers, which is where the opportunity is.”

BUILDING A BETTER PORTAL

Amdocs recently acquired mobile personalization vendor ChangingWorlds to increase its focus on mobile portals, not an OSS vendor’s typical domain. The App Store is the latest in its Interactive products suite, designed for service providers evolving towards ubiquitous all-IP networks. Prudhomme said that service providers are in the best position to launch an app store, because they know coveted data around location, preferences and billing information and could charge developers for this information. Also, if a consumer changes handsets, they wouldn’t have to lose their built-up catalogue of apps.

The Amdoc’s store is similar to an app store announced by fellow OSS vendor Comverse. The Comverse store comes out of its value added services group, but could have ties to its billing business as well, said Alice Bartram, associate vice president of marketing for Comverse's billing group. "If a service provider deploys the store and wants to add a billing component to it, we've already got those integrations worked out," she said.