Verizon announced at CTIA that it is opening its own Mobile Web Games and Apps Store, what it called ‘another easy and fun way for consumers to access the games and applications’ it offers. The portal will feature the tools and titles Verizon already makes available on many of its handsets. Customers with Get It Now-capable phones can use the mobile Web to browse and search the storefront on either a WAP or HTML handset.
It has app store right there in its title, but Verizon’s announced portal isn’t much more than an updated version of its age-old WAP site. The carrier is, however, hosting an application developers’ conference this summer, suggesting a real app store might not be out of the question. But for now, Verizon isn’t in a rush to compete in the app store market, according to vice president of digital programming Ryan Hughes. Instead, Verizon’s objective is to succeed in working with handset makers to enhance applications as much as they can.
“Brew is a closed ecosystem and each deal is hand cut,” Hughes said in a CTIA interview. VZW has put a ton of energy and money behind applications like Song ID for ringtones, its Rhapsody mobile music platform and ESPN application, he added. Titles in Verizon’s Mobile Web Games and App Store that can be previewed, sampled and ordered, include, Tetris, Guitar Hero World Tour, VZ NavigatorSM and Backup Assistant.
“We want to offer the biggest brands to bring a core experience,” Hughes said. “We are now getting more open and our concern is, how do we make sure we get developers and work with RIM to meet all the quality-of-service requirements and deliver the best experience to customers?”
Verizon won’t engage in the practice of restricting apps that it thinks consumers won’t like, but like AT&T, it will be make sure that RIM, Android and any other platform’s apps are complaint with legal, appropriateness and quality of service standards. Hughes pointed out that on Android at launch, some apps simply didn’t work, which is something Verizon hopes to avoid.
“There’s an inclination to race to be open, but we need to make sure we don’t compromise the experience,” he said. “Some folks don’t have that customer experience,” he said. “We need a level of protection to apply…The intent is to make sure developers have the best set of tools and the customer experience is good.”
