V CAST App Store to compete with official Android Market?
Verizon Wireless loves apps. In fact, Verizon loves them sooo much that they decided to create their own official app store, named V CAST Apps. Many users with Android phones on Verizon might already notice a V CAST Apps tab under …
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon has been building toward this since it announced in March 2010 that its own storefront would open on March 29 — the carrier's plan to run an official app store alongside the phone's default software. What is new this week is the placement: V CAST Apps surfacing as a visible tab on Verizon's Android handsets, putting a second storefront one tap away from Google's Android Market.
The competitive framing is still unconfirmed — the report positions V CAST Apps as a rival to the Android Market rather than a complement — but with Android at roughly a quarter of US mobile web browsing per August Quantcast data, whoever controls the default storefront on Verizon devices controls meaningful reach.
First-order effects
- Verizon's Android customers get a preinstalled second storefront on their phones, and the carrier gains a billing-and-placement channel it controls end to end.
- Android developers targeting Verizon's subscriber base now face two submission, review, and revenue-split pipelines instead of one.
Second-order effects
- Google's leverage over app distribution on the largest US Android carrier weakens, pressuring it to defend Android Market's default status or accept a fragmented storefront layer.
- Rival carriers watching Verizon's move have a template for inserting their own branded stores into Android handsets, multiplying storefronts across the platform.
Third-order effects
- If carrier-branded stores become standard on Android hardware, the platform's 'one market' promise erodes into a patchwork of carrier-gated distribution, with carriers — not Google — setting which apps reach subscribers by default.
The trend: Carriers are reasserting themselves as app-distribution gatekeepers on top of Android, trading platform coherence for their own storefront economics.