Study of the mobile application store ecosystem and factors influencing success of new application stores

Abstract

This is the age of the mobiles. Roughly 50% of the total population in the world has access to mobile phones. With the advent of mobile phones with much higher computational power, we also have seen a phenomenal growth of mobile applications. These mobile applications help deliver services and entertainment to the users on their mobiles. The retailing channel for mobile applications is through mobile application stores. These stores may have been set up by the handset manufacturer (OEM), Operating System provider (OS), Telecom service provider (MNOs) and third party independent stores. This project focuses on the telecom service providers and technology enablers who help them create the ecosystem for successful launch of their application store. The telecom operators face competition from other telecom operators and OEM/OS application stores. The technology enablers themselves face a wide variety of choices and hurdles in creating an ecosystem of application developers, applications and service providers. New technology enablers face competition face competition from existing ecosystems like the ones for android and apple application stores. This report studies these hurdles and choices faced by technology enablers. It identifies aspects of a new application store ecosystem that will bring together telecom operators and application developers to create a successful application store.