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French firm AppCity has built a multi-lingual destination, at www.appcity.com, that offers apps for iPhone, Android, Nokia Ovi, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile users.
It's subscription only, with a typical price of five euros a week for access to any apps. One-off downloads are not available (other than for free apps), but there's no subscription lock-in beyond a week.
The service is initially available in English and French, but AppCity plans to expand to Spanish and Chinese language versions by the end of summer 2010.
The firm is aiming to embed links to its service with handset firms and also to be hosted by operator portals. It says it will go live with one French operator imminently.
All billing is via the phone bill. There's no credit card support, but AppCity is working to integrate PayPal.
It's an intriguing launch, not least because of the connectivity to Apple's iTunes app store. The firm says this is in the form of a link that takes the user from AppCity to the Apple store - so it's not a direct download from AppCity itself.
Nevertheless, this is still a service that lets users buy unlimited iPhone apps for a flat fee. AppCity claims it has worked out a rev share deal with Apple to enable this.
The company certainly has ambitious plans. It wants to form partnerships with ISPs and also media firms (such as sports broadcasters) to establish vertical mobile app stores based on themed products.
It is targeting between 20,000 and 50,000 subs this year, and aims to have one formal operator partner in every major European territory by the end of 2010.
The company was founded by its CEO Paul Amsellem, who also founded both Phonevalley, France’s first SMS aggregator.
He told ME: "I've been there during the era of ringtones and wallpapers, and I know a bit about mobile consumers. The app revolution is here, but there's no unlimited data plan for apps. So that's why AppCity was launched – and we'll work with carrier partners to give people a real choice."
Thursday, June 3, 2010
WOW -AppCity launches global online app store| lets users buy unlimited iPhone apps for a flat fee @wsff10
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