Editor’s log, Stardate sixteen eleven oh nine: I find myself slowly becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of application stores available to the modern phone user. What started off as a fresh, original idea to sell applications for a dedicated device has quickly descended into the murky bog of confusion as every phone maker and his dog jumps on the bandwagon. What’s worse – I’m receiving reports that now the telcos are trying to cut into this already overcrowded market, with Optus launching its own app store for Symbian, Android, Blackberry, Windows media and Java handsets. This is the toughest assignment we’ve ever encountered, and it’s going to require all our strength to overcome it.
Despite the communication announcing the new Optus App Store’s arrival, there’s precious little actual information about it, other than the fact that there’s over 1000 apps available now, and that you can charge the app purchase to your bill. There’s no word on whether the content for this menacing threat to App stores is universal across the different platforms or whether apps are device specific. There’s also no word as to just how much applications will cost, and what percentage Optus will take, or how developers go about getting their programs on the Optus store.
If you’re brave enough to boldly go where only Optus employees have gone before, you can access the store by clicking the App icon in Optus Zoo on your phone, or texting app to 966 (so long as you’re an Optus customer, of course).
matt
November 16, 2009 at 2:46 PM
well, this is what happens when you don’t have one monopolistic yet fairly open OS across the whole market…
Report PermalinkMichael Harris
November 16, 2009 at 6:11 PM
Optus: Once again launching their own brand of fail. URL sent to you doesn’t take you to the page, just to the myZoo home.
And then of course, if you’re a smart cookie and attempt to browse it via a normal web browser – you’ll quickly find out there’s nothing there.
Basically, a complete waste of time.
Report Permalinkpinchies
November 16, 2009 at 6:45 PM
What is the point of having dedicated appstores for each device…. if it is not dedicated for each device!! What can optus possibly be offering of value? Free downloads of tiny files? More premium quality 2D java games? Sounds like a waste of engineers over at Optus… who are procrastinating from fixing their poor quality network, no doubt.
Report PermalinkKelsey Brookes
November 17, 2009 at 11:41 AM
And yet they *still* don’t have visual voicemail. Prats.
Report PermalinkHenry Jones
November 17, 2009 at 8:39 PM
You’d think they’d enable paid apps in the android market before bothering with all this crap.
Or maybe they don’t get any revenue from that, so it’s not a priority.
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