The study, which was conducted by the independent analyst house mobileSQUARED on behalf of Airwide Solutions, provider of next generation mobile messaging and mobile internet infrastructure, applications and solutions, revealed overwhelming enthusiasm for the App Store concept with all operators questioned planning to keep a degree of control in their own app store environments.
The survey demonstrated a split between those who expect to directly control less than 10% of the apps and services launched (45%), and those who plan to control 20% to 30% (36%). However, this dynamic could significantly increase the amount of fragmentation that application developers and publishers will need to address if they want to deploy services across multiple operators and on multiple handsets. Until real standards evolve operators need a consistent platform to be able to roll out enhanced applications and services.
In order to address the increasing need for a broad universe of mobile applications to work seamlessly across devices, platforms and networks Airwide Solutions has launched its Open Services Framework. The rise of the app store model depends on robust and powerful messaging infrastructure, which can efficiently support multiple media types while remaining flexible enough to enable the rapid rollout of new services that use location, presence, subscriber profiles, the mobile Internet or any other of a range of operator assets to enhance their functionality.
Jay Seaton, CMO at Airwide Solutions commented: “The study we have conducted with mobileSQUARED highlights that there is a clear demand from both operators and subscribers for a centralised content and services solution, one that will help operators to deliver relevant, high quality applications quickly to the end user. We’ve designed our Open Services Framework with this need for versatility, speed and quality in mind so that operators can enhance virtually any application with contextual information and support as well as quickly rollout the new mobile applications their subscribers demand without risking disruption to the underlying infrastructure.”