Mplayit has been available for Telefonica O2 customers in the UK since November 2009 and the company has now announced new partnerships in Canada with carrier, Rogers, and with Australian market-leader, Telstra.
Mplayit has been helping major US carriers like Sprint and AT&T and publishers, including EA, offer playable discovery for mobile games and apps since late 2008. The new deals point to a broader trend in the carrier market.
Traditionally, mobile operators have failed to properly exploit the power of the web in merchandising their application catalogs to customers, said Mplayit. The rapid growth in the social web in the past two years has left many even further behind.
Now, with the growth in smartphone penetration and increased competition from device manufacturers themselves, mobile operators are recognising the need to improve mobile application discovery and provide their customers with the best experience possible, stated Mplayit. Mplayit is partnering with operators to help them achieve these goals.
“Carriers throughout the world are facing unprecedented competitive pressure in terms of both app downloads and customer mindshare," said Michael Powers, founder and CEO of Mplayit. "We offer them a simple and cost effective way to plug into users’ social graphs, massively improve their service proposition and help drive additional app downloads like never before."
Mplayit offers search and try-before-you-buy playable previews of popular mobile applications on leading mobile platforms and accessible from a standard Web or mobile browser. Users can rate, comment, and recommend individual apps to their social network including Facebook and Twitter.
In addition, Mplayit's 'Apptivity' feed gives users a view of the most played and recommended apps in real time adding a useful and entertaining element to regular lists or rankings.
In December 2009, Mplayit launched full support for Android, on top of it's existing iPhone, mobile Java and BlackBerry services.