Customer engagement has become key in an environment as competitive as the mobile handset space, and launching application stores is being seen as a preferred way to meet this end. For instance, Samsung is dabbling with the idea of launching an application store soon. The company mentioned its urge to move into the music store model during its Omnia HD phone launch. ?Currently, we just have Samsung fun club. But tests are going on globally for launching our application store,? said Sunil Dutt, country head, mobile business, Samsung India, although it?s still early days for launching such a store in India for the firm.
Application stores have gained popularity worldwide soon after Apple launched its app store. ?We?re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding. We?re thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year,? said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO during its financial results ended third quarter June 27, 2009.
According to Soundbuzz-PricewaterhouseCoopers report on entertainment, India?s mobile music industry will be the world?s largest at Rs 3,600 crore by 2009-10, with the demand for full-track downloads and true tones increasing. Nokia, after introducing Ovi store in India, will be launching its online music store in the coming few weeks. Firms like LG have also tried replicating the Apple app store model. ?In order to offer customer engagement, the handset manufacturers have started aping the Apple model of launching application store. Handset vendors find it difficult to offer data services on low end devices and the app store model helps them to engage low end users and also monetise it. This also gives them an opportunity to cater to a larger part of market,? said Naveen Mishra, manager, communications research, IDC India.
As per Juniper Research, the annual sales of low-cost mobile handsets in 2008 in the Indian sub-continent region accounted for the majority (23%) of low-cost handset sales, and by 2014, the region will account for 22% of sales. Nokia had earlier mentioned its intention to become a complete solutions provider from just a handset manufacturer.