You may have heard that Verizon Wireless has launched the V Cast appstore for some select BlackBerry devices, despite the BlackBerry App World being the official outlet for all apps. There were also rumors that Verizon would soon do the same for Android devices. Now, an Android blog has just confirmed that this is actually true.
Verizon is reportedly accepting apps for the new V Cast App Store on the Android platform. This store is totally separate from the Android Market (the official Android app store) and so, represents competition for Android. Moreover it will be designed quite unlike the Android Market and very much like Apple’s App Store! Now how about that for a low blow?
The problem for Android is that this store will come pre-installed on all Verizon devices and so, will be displayed much more prominently than the Android Market. After all, Verizon will be pushing their store quite consciously in the spotlight.
Verizon Appstore and Developers
The store is also reported to be free for developers to submit their apps for approval. Verizon is looking at a 14 day period for the approval process (like Apple). Developers will share the revenue generated from the apps in a 70-30 ratio.
There will be both paid and free apps for customers to download. The paid apps will be billed along with the regular usage charge, which means that there is no headache of a spot payment.
Initially on Verizon phones running Android 2.2 Froyo OS can access this store, which rules out quite a lot of operational Android devices. But Verizon has already made its intentions clear with marketing matter stating that buying Android apps through ‘other channels’ (read Android Market) can be difficult. Moreover Verizon is promising top notch quality with the best content programming team at work behind the scenes.
So, is Google’s pledge towards openness, strongly manifested by the Android OS, now going to haunt it? Verizon is already using Bing as the default search engine on some devices, supplanting Google. And now, this V Cast store. How will Google react to this, if more carriers start eating into its revenue?
