LG opens mobile app store with no US plans
updated 04:00 pm EDT, Mon July 13, 2009
LG intros phone app store
LG Electronics announced on Monday it will launch an online applications store for mobile phones starting on Tuesday. The LG Application Store will offer about 1,400 apps in 15 languages and will expand to other markets before the end of 2009. The service will first hit Singapore, Malaysia and Australia before coming to Europe and South America sometime in 2009. Along with the market expansion, the number of available titles is also expected to grow to over 2,000. Just 100 of the early apps will be free.
The portal won't forcefully limit access to LG devices and should also give at least Samsung phones with similar operating systems access to the store. The range of pricing for the software has not yet been announced. Plans to make the LG marketplace available to US customers have not been announced.
LG is the third major hardware maker to reveal an application store this year, following Nokia's Ovi Store and RIM's BlackBerry App World. Most of the stores released in the past year are commonly understood to have been reactions to the success of Apple's App Store compared to earlier business models for most other smartphones, which have had to scatter apps across multiple outside stores or else trust customers to finding the apps on product websites.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2009
hello compatibility issue
Seriously, it will be either incredibly difficult for Ovi to determine which apps work with which phone (as EVERY phone has a slightly different version of Java/screen/controls), or end-users will be forced to play Guinea Pig, and have to beg for a refund when an app doesn't work on their phone.