Shop till U drop!

Apple iTunes App Store (dubbed the last greatest capitalism experiment) has been a terrific success. More than 500m applications, from games to interactive travel guides, have been downloaded.

Without surprise more companies are roolling out their App Store:

• Ericsson App Store. (Ericsson without Sony)

By August its customers will be able to personalize their phones with a range of downloadable utilities, tools, and games over multiple platforms

• Vodafone App Store. Just announced.
• Orange Application Store which is already available for selected handsets in France, official release will happen before the year is over in France first, followed by the UK.
• Plaza Retail Store (Qualcomm)

• Java Store (Oracle)

• Oracle Store (Oracle) Custormers can purchase Oracle VM Support, Oracle VM media packs, and Oracle Enterprise Linux support services media packs.

• Ovi Store (Nokia-O2-Orange)

At a glance: users from 152 countries around the world. Support for more than 75 Nokia devices. Integrated mobile billing with 27 operators globally. Localized in 5 different languages. Opened two weeks ago

• Windows Marketplace (Microsoft)

• App World (RIM's BlackBerry)

• Android Market (Google) Available in some countries

Only a few shops will thrive. Without doubt Java Store will be one of these. You need more than a closed platform (you know? Ericsson phone chargers are not comppatible with their own previous models!) in order to be successful.

Update 1. Tony Cripps, principal analyst at mobile phone consultancy Ovum, said: "Every man and his dog wants an apps store. Apple's has been such a phenomenal success that all the other players are desperately trying to play catch-up as traditional revenues fall."

Update 2. "Two months ago Nokia launched a revamped app store called Ovi that featured games, applications, podcasts and videos. But the store got off to a rocky start, as users faced problems accessing it and downloading the programs. Nokia blamed the “extraordinarily high spikes of traffic” for the performance issues. "

Source: wired.com