Microsoft Launches OneApp For Non-Smartphones. Will This Excite App Developers?
The blogosphere may have been discussing iPhones and Blackberries all the time, but most parts of the world, including ours, are those where it is the feature phones – the ‘not so smart’ ones that rule the roost. So, while iPhone app developers can be called an industry by itself in the west, here basically it does not matter.
It is on that note that the new launch from Microsoft seems pretty exciting. The new application, called OneApp is one light 150 kb application that needs to be installed on the feature phones to run all sorts of mobile apps like Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, Reader and a lot of games and news apps.
Quite handy for people in the emerging markets. The app has very evidently been developed with this very market in mind. The application which is currently being launched in South Africa will soon be made available in India and the rest of the emerging market, where the mobile phone growth has been prolific.
How do you think this will take off? In my opinion, given the traction, this will help recreate the mobile app craze that came with the launch of iPhones in the US. But one critical difference is that in the case of iPhones, there was an incentive to the app developers to cash in on the craze because they stood to make money off the sale of apps.
But here, I doubt if people would want to download paid apps. Keeping that aspect in mind, it would be interesting to see if the app developers do take an interest in creating free apps monetized otherwise or will this fall off owing to a lack of interest from the app developers.
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