Mobile Applications Everywhere

Since the introduction of the 2.0 version of the iPhone software, Apple, users and developers have enjoyed the App Store – the mechanism that allows customers to purchase third-party applications for their devices anytime, anywhere. It has generated millions of dollars for developers and for Apple, who gets 30% of each purchase.

Naturally, other mobile phone companies have wanted a piece of the pie, and now almost every major player – RIM, Windows Mobile, Android and Palm – have a mobile application store in one stage or another of deployment. Gizmodo takes a look:

The first thing you’ll notice about these efforts—coming from such traditionally competitive companies as Palm, BlackBerry, Nokia and Microsoft—is just how similar they all sound. App World? App Catalog? App Market? Mobile Marketplace? This outward likeness actually runs pretty deep—these stores are advertising uncannily similar feature sets, for both users and developer.