The Marlin Mobile Blog

The Verizon App Store and the Evolving Role of Carriers

Posted on 23 July 2009

Verizon recently announced it is creating its own cross-platform app store that will ship with its phones…and will only ship with their own app store installed:

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=7EF200BA-1A64-6A71-CE5297EFB356998F

The Verizon App Store will not block access out of the box to other app stores in its purview, specifically the Blackberry App World, Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and the Android Marketplace.  The consumer faces no barrier to download them on their own.

There is a lot to talk about here.  A carrier taking this approach was inevitable given the success of the iPhone App Store, but several topics come to mind…

How far out into the future will the triple and quadruple-play revenue streams of the major carriers begin to blur and fundamentally change their models?  What actions will be taken to ensure that these revenue streams remain distinct for as long as possible?  I am fascinated as to when we will see market pressure that will substantively combine home television and internet access (mobile or otherwise) into one service.  This is a topic for a different blog, but interesting nonetheless.  It is abundantly clear however, that the role of the carrier in our lives is changing given the extent of their access.  Many thought leaders in technology and finance are conceding that the path to sustained growth for carriers is to ultimately serve as banks, further leveraging their expanding role in facilitating transactions.

It is obviously a big leap to go from an app store to banking, but I believe this is a vivid example of a carrier asserting itself with a keen understanding for its role in commerce and an abundant awareness of the rate of change it faces.