GetJar is an independent mobile application store – unlike the Apple Store or the Android Market, it doesn’t have manufacturer backing as a safety net. But it also isn’t tied down to one device, and GetJar offers free applications to download for pretty much every smartphone platform available. GetJar also claims to be the 2nd largest application store in the world behind the Apple Store (a title that Nokia somewhat amusingly attempted to yoink in December). And today GetJar is announcing the launch of a new service that could be very interesting. App Catalogue Express is a white label mobile app catalog that allows other mobile entities to instantly launch their own app store based on the GetJar catalogue.
What’s the story?
The service is aimed at mobile operators, content and app aggregators and GetJar partners. It will allow them to create a digital “shop front”, with their own branding. To all intents and purposes it would look like their own app store. But the apps being sold would all be sourced from the GetJar “warehouse”. At launch, GetJar is using App Catalogue Express to launch a mobile app store for The Carphone Warehouse, the biggest independent mobile phone seller in Europe.
App Catalogue Express is intended to give an easy entry point into the app market for any third party company that wants to sell apps.
Ilja Laurs, GetJar Founder and CEO, comments: “The demand for apps has soared over the past year. Many operators and other third parties are keen to introduce an app store, without needing to manage the back office infrastructure. ACE is designed to make it quick and easy for carriers, aggregators and partners to launch a pre-populated app store for all major platforms and devices, using GetJar’s large catalogue of existing apps.”
What we think?
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the “application warehouse” idea. Symbian has been going on about it for ages, Samsung had much the same idea with its Application Seller Site service and most recently a company called Apprupt launched something very similar in Germany. But I honestly believe that GetJar has the best chance of making this work of any of them.
Why?
Look at the above example – Carphone Warehouse is launching a GetJar branded store. The thing about Carphone Warehouse is that it already tried to launch its own app store – Snappstore surfaced last May http://www.gomonews.com/yet-another-mobile-application-store-thanks-carphone-warehouse/. Obviously it hasn’t done very well. GetJar has been in the app selling business for longer than maybe any other application seller on the planet. It has years of experience in technical difficulties of shifting apps to a wide variety of different devices with different requirements. This really could be a killer move from GetJar – I think it could get a huge amount of interest from the already significant number of partners that GetJar has around the world, including Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, 3UK, Virgin France and Opera Mini.
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