Free Newsletter
China Mobile wants half of app store revenues
China Mobile will reportedly seek a 50 percent cut of all sales from its forthcoming Mobile Market application storefront. "China Mobile wants at least 50 percent of the revenues, and the rest goes to the developer," a source inside China Mobile subsidiary Shanghai Mobile tells TelecomAsia.net. By contrast, Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market claim just 30 percent of revenues.
China Mobile first announced plans to launch an app store in November 2008--China Mobile-controlled Aspire Technologies and the operator's Guangdong branch are presently readying Mobile Market for launch, with the store expected to go live in September. Mobile Market will enable developers to offer applications for all handset operating systems except the iPhone, and will be accessible from both GSM and TD-SCDMA phones. Earlier this month, China Mobile reported its subscriber total is now closing in on the 483 million mark--the current estimated population of the United States is only 306 million.
For more on China Mobile's revenue demands:
- read this TelecomAsia.net article
Related articles:
China Mobile: 607B text messages sent in 2008
Google, China Mobile ink search deal
Comments
Posted by dean collins | May 29, 2009 - 11:46pm
but this isn't for iPhones and as any vendor can set up any appstore for android and windows mobile i wonder how they are going to prevent handsets purchasing from third party stores.
hmmm i wonder what the mandarin is for www.MobileAppstore.com.cn
Cheers,
Dean
Posted by Anonymous | May 31, 2009 - 9:53pm
It's a monopoly, and it needs to die for the betterment of the world and to free up the market. I bet they won't even offer any added value service beyond accepting payments through their mobile network, as opposed to Apple who's actually doing some quality assurance.
The handset manufacturers have long been slaves to the network operators as they've depended on them as both sales channels (bundled subscriptions) and for legal approvals required to sell in each country.
Apple has almost managed to break this dependency, but Android is too weak. Both China Unicom and China Mobile are aiming to build their own Android versions, and you can be sure that they will ensure only their Android versions will be available and that their Android versions will not allow you to connect to any other appstore.
SHARE
WITH:
Comments (2) | Post a comment