Colibria has announced the availability of its App Center, designed to enable mobile operators to deploy multiple application services through their existing messaging infrastructure. Hosted by Colibria to allow rapid deployment at low cost, the App Center can deliver a number of internet communities, covering social networks and instant messaging services, to mobile devices through one simple interface.
With access to a number of featured applications, including Twitter, Google Talk, Facebook and flickr, Colibria's App Center is compatible across a number of existing handsets, opening up potential new revenue opportunities with markets and subscribers not previously able to access mobile applications. Providing extensive features and applications generally associated with high-end smartphones, mobile users can now access applications on handsets that previously could not support such services, for instance mobile email on a non-email phone.
The Colibria App Center also hosts internet IM Apps, which give access to Windows Live Messenger and other services, Content Applications including news feeds and access to 3rd party applications and Value Added Services including games, translation services and weather updates. Once these apps have been selected on the phone they will sit in the users contact list, giving them immediate access to the application and updates when information associated with the application changes. For example subscribers are updated when their social network receives a post or status change.
Demand for mobile applications and social networking become more prevalent, as seen with predictions that mobile social network users will grow to 800m by 2012* and from the recent news that Apple has recently passed one billion downloads through its application store. The Colibria App Center has been designed as a cost effective way enabling operators to mobile such services with easy access to frequently used applications, premium services and paid for content, driving additional new revenue streams.
Keith Gibson, CEO at Colibria said "Operators are beginning to see the importance of broadening the mobile community experience, and the new App Center will go a long way to improving this as well as operator revenues. With a single integration point to access multiple social networks, internet IM services and content, the App Center is already showing from early indications across Colibria's customer base that traffic can double when applications are introduced. Customer expectations are shifting, and operators need to be able to respond quickly to these expectations with innovative new services such as those available through the Colibria App Center."