T-Mobile CTO Cole Brodman says at the Open Mobile Summit that T-Mobile will let customers pay for Android applications on their monthly mobile bills starting Nov. 17. On that day, T-Mobile will also launch the T-Mobile Channel on Android Market to recommend some of the Market's apps to T-Mobile customers. Android Market currently hosts 12,000 applications, dwarfed by the 100,000 applications for Apple's iPhone. Android's growth is respectable for a platform that launched on smartphones little more than a year ago. The iPhone is a phenomenon no one has seen before in the nascent smartphone market.
With
Motorola Droid versus
Apple iPhone stories dotting the world of wireless news,
T-Mobile's CTO reminded everyone that the
first company to make a phone based on Google's Android platform has its own
dogs in the smartphone race.
T-Mobile CTO Cole Brodman said at the
Open Mobile Summit Nov. 4 that T-Mobile will let customers pay for Android
applications on their monthly mobile bills starting Nov. 17.
The billing capability will be part of a new T-Mobile Channel on the online
Android Market that is designed to recommend Android applications to T-Mobile
customers.
Users will be able to visit the T-Mobile Channel in the Android Market,
browse for applications for their T-Mobile phones and click to buy them. They
will be billed for their purchases on their regular wireless bill.
To showcase Android applications, T-Mobile the week of Nov. 2 added the
ability for Android developers to pitch their applications daily for featured
placement and marketing partnerships with T-Mobile.
Android Market currently hosts 12,000 applications, compared with the
100,000 applications Apple's iPhone App Store hosts today.
While this makes the Android platform seem dwarfish by comparison, Android's
growth is respectable for a platform that launched on smartphones little more
than a year ago. The iPhone is a phenomenon no one has seen before in the
nascent smartphone market.
Brodman meanwhile said T-Mobile's fourth-quarter phone lineup includes the
seminal T-Mobile G1 phone, the T-Mobile MyTouch, the new Motorola Cliq and the
upcoming Samsung Behold II.
While the G1 is generally considered clunky, if not amateurish, by the
standard set by iPhone, the MyTouch has made a strong case for Android as a
viable smartphone platform.
In a statistic-laden keynote speech in San Francisco,
Brodman told the crowd that half of all MyTouch users visit the Android Market
at least once per day.
Moreover, 80 percent of MyTouch users browse the Web at least once per day,
and two-thirds say they browse several times per day, he said. Nearly half of MyTouch
users say they have customized their MyTouch phones, while more than 40 percent
of MyTouch users access social networking sites multiple times each day.
However, while the MyTouch has had a strong showing as the current top
Android phone, the
Motorola Droid, which Verizon Wireless will begin selling Nov.
6, is getting the
bulk of the attention as an iPhone challenger.
Mixed reviews have done nothing to dull the hype of this device, which is
backed by strong ads from Verizon and a preorder offer from
Best Buy, complete with instant rebate.
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