T-Mobile USA To Take Extreme Measure; Will Ditch The Traditional Content/App Deck
This story was written by Tricia Duryee.
From our sister site MocoNews: Starting this fall, T-Mobile USA will take the extraordinary step of ditching its traditional deck on the phone and replacing it with a platform that's open to almost any developer, multiple sources have told us. Think of *Apple's'* App store, but for the entire carrier's handset line-up from smartphone to feature phone. As one developer, who was briefed on the matter, said: "The App store was a big deal, but that's one phone. This is an entire carrier." In other words, we are talking about T-Mobile's 31.5 million subscribers today vs. the 10 million iPhones Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) expects to sell by year-end (granted, the iPhone users tend to be more engaged as early adopters). The impact of this move by T-Mobile could set off a wave of changes in the industry, as other carriers feel pressure to offer new applications on their networks. Clearly, for this to happen, T-Mobile will have to follow through on its promises to encourage developers to participate. We are waiting for a statement from T-Mobile and will update when we have it....full details on MocoNews.
By Tricia Duryee