RIM, Nokia, and Apple are renowned for their handsets, but more importantly, they are also the ones responsible for developing their own respective operating systems. As such is the case, it comes as no surprise that each one of them has also come out with an app store for their respective platforms to service their loyal customers.
Now, LG has also decided to join the party as well and launched an app store of their own simply called the LG Application Store. While it doesn’t exactly come as a shock anymore for companies to hop on-board the app store bandwagon, it is somewhat unexpected of LG since they are basically more of a hardware manufacturer rather than a software developer. Furthermore, the LG Application Store is geared towards LG Windows Mobile-running devices only (LG GM730, LG KS20) as opposed to targeting their own homegrown platform. Now this is clearly a first in our books.
The LG Application Store is now available in Australia and Singapore and will roll out to other Asia Pacific countries later on. No word, though, on when it will become available in regions outside Asia, but a safe guess would be sometime in early 2010. They’ve already got 1400 apps to offer, and they plan to increase this to a strong 2,000 app to the store by the end f the year. In order to achieve this pretty tall order, they’ve made the SDK available here for interested developers to download.
Can the LG Application Store follow in the successful footsteps of Apple’s App Store? Without international availability and compatibility across more devices, we can’t see this becoming as big and lucrative as what Apple has. However, since Microsoft has yet to unleash their app store, Skymarket, LG’s Application Store will have to suffice for those LG users in the region looking for a convenient way to purchase apps for their Windows Mobile-powered handset.
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