Will consumers rise to operators’ high hopes of a Apple App Store challenge?

February 25, 2010 12:59 by Colin Strong

The launch of the Wholesale Applications Community is potentially a substantial challenge from network operators to the dominance of Apple. Managing consumer demand and the consumer experience are likely to be key.

Recent news that 24 leading network operators are launching The Wholesale Applications Community, a mobile apps store which aims to make it easier for developers to build and sell apps “irrespective of device or technology”, begs the question of how consumers will respond.

It’s certainly a tough market for network operators with recent research by GfK Technology showing handset manufacturers dominating the apps market and indeed, a recent report by Gartner gives the somewhat startling statistic that Apple is responsible for 99.4% of mobile apps sales in 2009.

The four key factors that GfK Technology consider to be critical in driving the potential success of this sort of store are:

  • High awareness: Significant investment is needed to promote the site so consumers know of its existence and where to go to access it
  • ‘Must-have’ apps: Apple has been instrumental in building the market for mobile apps, any store needs to be able to offer apps that tap into consumer needs across a wide range of different demographics and lifestyles
  • Excellent user interface: Possibly a challenging area for operators as the user interface for the store and the apps will need to work across a wide range of devices. Furthermore, finding a common and easy to use purchase mechanism is essential if operators want to eat into Apple’s 99.4% share of app sales.
  • Getting commercials right: So that developers are incentivised to create new applications and they are attractively priced for consumers to purchase.


The prize for getting this right is huge, the global market for mobile apps is in the billions and whereas Apple are constrained to only selling to iPhone or iTouch users there appears to be no such constraint for this initiative. Network operators have one big advantage over some other player – their proximity to the consumer which they will need to leverage in order to make this a success.

Photo courtesy of:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ousby/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

About the author

Colin Strong In Work: Colin is MD of GfK Business & Technology a London based research consultancy covering a range of tech, b2b and content categories Out of work: Colin's family are long standing sufferers of his attempts to start playing the guitar when he hit 40

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