Orange opens app stores in Belgium, France and UK

The Orange Application Shop is now live in Belgium, France and Great Britain, offering customers access to game titles and apps. These app stores are also open to developers who wish to submit their apps aimed at the three great European mobile phone markets.

The Orange Belgium Application Shop at the Orange Belgium WAP portal recently went live, and will be going live on the Web portal later in 2009. It accepts applications running on the Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms as well as Java apps.

The Orange Belgium Application Shop categorizes apps into four groups: 1) education and reference; 2) lifestyle; 3) travel; and utilities.

Its counterpart store in France is now also open, and seeks to capture the attention of the French who make 900,000 WAP connections every month.

In Britain, the company website says that "the Orange Application Shop is live on Orange UK Web and WAP portals, with a dedicated Shop for consumers, and another for business customers, each with slightly different requirements".

It adds that "in the near future the 2009 consumer relaunch will include: 1) an ‘application’ icon on the Orange World homescreen; 2) new app categories; 3) the first of a quarterly “Collection” highlighting a few select apps; and zero-rated downloads.

The rise of application stores, such as these ones by Orange, aims to propel greater revenue for telcos, mobile phone makers and developers, apart from serving the needs of customers across the world.

[Via Mobiletopsoft]