Airtel Launches App Store – Neatly Integrated with Billing Solution

February 10, 2010

By manish

Airtel has launched its App store (Airtel App Central), which boasts of 1250 Apps across 25 categories (both free and paid applications).

Airtel users can navigate to the app store via Airtel Live app and there are quite a few interesting apps – for instance, Gilli Danda, and apps based on festivals like Holi, Diwali.

There is an SMS Directory App which saves you the trouble of remembering formats and those difficult to remember numbers which are required to query for popular services and information such as your flight details, cross check your railway booking or even find out insurance details [details].

The app billing is smartly integrated with Airtel’s billing solution and one need not buy the app using credit card – the cost is automatically added to the customer’s mobile bill or deducted from the available talk-time.

An interesting development, considering that Aircel has just announced the partnership with Infy’s Flypp to launch an app store.

And post Airtel’s launch,Reliance too has announced the launch of it’s app store.

The first version of the Reliance Applications Store is planned to go live on GSM handsets as early as the month end; however, it will launch an expanded version across CDMA as well as GSM handsets later this quarter. RWorld 2.0 will be equipped with state-of-the-art service delivery platform supporting on-device portals, idle screens, widgets and RSS readers showcasing latest developments across the world.

Reliance Applications Store allows customers to browse and download applications (paid/free) through a controlled environment. The success of the Applications Store lies in the ease with which developers across the world can develop, publish and promote programs and applications through a single mother portal cutting across all platforms and network elements.

What’s your take on the value-chain of the mobile operator’s app store?

Tags: aircel app store, airtel app store, mobile app store, reliance app store

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rakshit on February 10, 2010 at 10:24 am

Sheep (mentality) grazing into tiger’s den yet again. What happened to Zapak?

Lalit on February 10, 2010 at 2:08 pm

My thoughts are at
http://munimo.com/blog/2009/12/15/business-case-for-indian-app-store/
I think 3rd party with multiple operator tie ups has better chances of success rather than such operator oriented app store in the era of Dual sim phones ..:-)

Pradeep on February 11, 2010 at 12:35 am

Airtel App Central is a good start, thumbs up. Finally a market is available for application providers (developers) in India. Went through Lalit’s article as well, he mentioned about third party app store, which will never work in india. Monetization with independent app store is very difficult. Airtel app central is powered by Cellmania, but it is launched by Airtel. With the operator billing system in place, prefered model is operator led only where user don’t have to take out credit card. US market is very different where ARPU is 60$ with iPhone data plan, indian market ARPU is only 500Rs. Price points are totally different between indian and us economy. Thanks Manish for covering Airtel app central.