Opera Launches Appcelerate Program For Mobile App Developers

Yesterday at APPNATION Opera Software announced the availability of Appcelerate, a program intended to help with the discovery, distribution and monitization of mobile apps. Appcelerate lets developers place their apps in the Opera Mobile Store, a web based app store at mobilestore.opera.com/ that works in all browsers. The Opera Mobile Store is a featured Speed Dial link on the start page in Opera Mini, the world most popular mobile browser with over 100,000 users. The Opera Mobile Store is available … Continue reading

Hands On With Opera’s New In-Browser Mobile App Store

Yesterday, Norway’s Opera Software announced the release of the Opera Mobile Store (image top right), a cross platform app store for Android, BlackBerry, Java, Symbian and legacy Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices. The store is a mobile web app at mobilestore.opera.com.  It was created in partnership with Appia (formerly PocketGear) and includes both free and paid apps.  When I tried it the only payment option available was by credit card. Publishers receive 70% of  net sales revenue (after taxes … Continue reading

Sprint Building a Mobile Webapp Marketplace

At the Sprint Developer Conference today, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse (image above) introduced what the operator is calling the “Browser-VAS” ecosystem. It’s supposed to let developers create and monetize browser based apps. Browser-VAS is built around Openwave‘s Integra cloud service.  Hopefully, the service will have a more user friendly name when it launches in the first half of 2011. The apps appear in a toolbar that users can optionally add to the browser. They can then “install” free and paid … Continue reading

Free App Store For Boost Mobile and Sprint iDen Users

I’ve built and launched  a new mobile and desktop service called BoostApps.  It’s an off-portal free app store for Boost Mobile and Sprint Nextel iDEN network users. Unlike most mobile platforms, iDEN doesn’t support direct over the air downloads of Java applications using the browser. Games and apps can be purchased from Sprint using a desktop or mobile browser. Purchased games are provisioned to the user’s handset and downloaded to the phone through a Java ME application called Download Apps … Continue reading

Carnival of the Mobilists at About Mobility

The Carnival of the Mobilists has set up shop at C. Enrique Ortiz’ blog, About Mobility this week.  Enrique has selected the best posts from those submitted to create a showcase  of what’s new and exciting in mobile today. This week’s posts cover the gamut of today’s hot mobile topics. There are a couple of posts each on app stores and on mobile’s role in education and individual pieces on HD Voice, Opera Mini 5, the business of mobile music … Continue reading

How to Run the Ovi Store App on the N95-3 NAM (and Why You Might Not Want To)

It’s been three weeks since Nokia’s Ovi App Store launched.  I figured that it was time to go back and take a look at how the store was evolving.  By now the opening day rush would be over and the traffic related availability problems that some users reported resolved.  I also wanted to see if the store’s rather bare selves were filling up. But first I made a determined attempt to get the Ovi Store App to install on my … Continue reading

Ovi Store Soft Launches

Reports are starting to appear on the web of users seeing the new Ovi app, themes and ringtones store on their phones. So far it’s been sighted in Australia, Ireland and Singapore. Early reports  indicate that there is only a small selection of apps available so far.  Nokia promises that the store will  have over 2000 items when it fully launches. The launch was confirmed on Nokia’s Conversations blog in a story that was later pulled but is still visible … Continue reading

Ovi App Store Presentation in Mt. View Today

I’m going to an Ovi App Store presentation today in the Silicon Valley.  I’m hoping to learn more about the program; how it will work for developers, what the store will look like for users on different devices, timeline for rollout, etc. What I’ve heard: Both free and paid apps will be accepted Initially the store will be available on the N97 only, eventually it will be extended to most S60 and S40 devices. Users can pay with a credit … Continue reading