14 DAY TRIAL // One of the latest adopters of the application store trend is Orange, which is now reported to intend on coming to the market with its own version of the software portal meant to bring joy to mobile phone users. The carrier's application marketplace will be called simply Orange Application Shop, and it is expected to go live in the next few weeks in both France and the UK.
It seems that not everyone will be able to enjoy the new Orange app store right from the beginning, as it will only be available on four handsets at first, namely on Nokia N96, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, HTC Touch Diamond and Sony Ericsson W980. The mobile phone operator also announced that there were already around 200-300 games and applications getting ready to enter the portal, and that they came from popular developers like AFP, Gameloft and PacketVideo.
The software solutions that will be available with the Orange Application Shop are expected to sport an average price of €6, while the highest is expected to be more than €12. Yet the carrier plans to allow users to download trial versions of the applications listed on the portal, so that they could try them out and then consider purchasing what they like.
Another interesting thing about the Orange Application Shop is that the operator is willing to negotiate the percent of the revenue the software developers would receive for the apps submitted to the portal. An example of how this would work would be that the developer of an application that is highly popular should receive more money than one that has a software solution with only moderate traction from users. As many of you might already know, companies like Apple, Microsoft or RIM have set a fixed revenue percentage that developers would receive for their applications.
The Orange Application Shop is expected to become available on more handsets starting with the fourth quarter of the year, when the carrier might also make it available on more markets.