T-Mobile's Big Idea: An iPhone-Like App Store For Every Phone
Like all wireless carriers, T-Mobile needs its subscribers to start doing more with their phones than just making phone calls and sending text messages. So, perhaps inspired by the early success of Apple's iPhone App Store …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's iPhone was available in the U.S. exclusively through AT&T, while Apple had paired the iPhone 3G with an App Store model. T-Mobile's proposal adapts that software-distribution idea for handsets across its own network rather than relying on access to the iPhone itself.
The move also recasts the carrier's traditional on-phone deck as a broader application storefront, making software discovery and downloads part of T-Mobile's service proposition.
First-order effects
- T-Mobile would give subscribers on multiple handset types a carrier-run channel for finding and downloading applications, beyond voice and text services.
- Developers seeking T-Mobile customers would face a single carrier storefront rather than handset-by-handset placement through the carrier's traditional deck.
Second-order effects
- Apple's App Store becomes a competitive benchmark for T-Mobile's customer experience, even though Apple's U.S. iPhone distribution remains tied to AT&T.
- T-Mobile's handset partners would have a stronger incentive to support the carrier's store and its application-discovery model across their devices.
Third-order effects
- If other carriers adopt the model, application storefronts can become a core point of carrier control over mobile software distribution rather than a feature limited to a single handset maker.
- The emerging contest shifts from selling network access alone to controlling the software catalog, discovery path, and customer relationship on the phone.
The trend: Wireless carriers are moving to make applications and software storefronts a central part of the mobile-service business.