Samsung planning their own App store

In the run up to the Mobile World Congress event (which starts in just over a week), the rumour mill seems to be working overtime linking mobile phone manufacturers to all sorts of weird and wonderful stories. The latest is thatSamsung will be launching an application store, similar to that of the Apple App store and Google’s Android Market, where customers can get their fix of all sorts of downloadable goodies. Not one to normally be taken in with these internet rumours, this one certainly seems feasible with the runaway success of Apples App store showing other manufactures that such a thing can work. Plus the image to the left sort of helps to make things look more official!

Going under the name Samsung Mobile Applications (catchy isn’t it), the initial focus will apparently be on the UK market (great news for us) with over 1000 apps reported to be available from the off, both paid and free. Things are sounding good but before we get too excited, let’s take a look at the cons. Firstly, Samsung don’t have one operating system. The i8510 runs on Symbian Series 60, while the Omnia is aWindows Mobile phone, the Pixon uses a generic Samsung UI and there is also rumoured to be an Android phone in the pipeline. So how can Samsung possibly hope to cater for all these different operating systems? Will we see four versions of the same app? Or will there be selected applications that are only available on a certain platform? This is certainly a stumbling block, one which both Apple and Google haven’t come across as both stick to one operating system.

Whether this rumour turns out to be true should become clear over the next couple of weeks and, if it does, it remains to be seen how Samsung will make it work with their tendency to keep alot of finger in alot of pies, from an operating system point of view. On the other hand, a bit of healthy competition for Apple and Android can only be a good thing.