Carriers Get Into The Game Of Making Apps For iPhone, Android
In the beginning, carriers were especially wary of application stores, like the iPhone App Store, and rightfully so — they competed with their own content offerings and cut them out of the revenue split. But now, it’s starting to look like carriers are considering it as a potential opportunity, especially the handset-makers’ storefronts are more popular than their own in some cases.
Today, AT&T (NYSE: T) released the Navigator application on the iPhone App store, the third application it has released for the platform. The navigation app is free to download, but will cost iPhone subscribers $9.99 a month. Earlier this week, T-Mobile USA announced the Sherpa application, which was developed by Geodelic on its behalf. The free app will be available for the Android phones later this summer, and is the second application T-Mobile has launched for the device. In both cases, the carriers started off with very utilitarian apps that let users pay bills and check their minutes, but have slowly moved into more categories.
Previously, AT&T launched myWireless Mobile, which allows you to pay your bill, and view voice and data usage. It also launched AT&T Mobile Remote Access, which is tied to AT&T’s U-Verse TV service and allows people to program their DVR from the road. Likewise, T-Mobile’s other Android application is T-Mobile MyAccount, which is free and allows subscribers to check minutes and pay their bill.
The applications unveiled this week by AT&T and T-Mobile definitely go a step beyond offering bill-payment services. T-Mobile’s Sherpa application provides a CitySearch-like environment that supposedly makes better recommendations as it gets to know your patterns and tastes. Likewise, AT&T’s Navigator service, which is powered by Telenav, is something that it was offering on other handsets, but couldn’t offer on the iPhone until Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) started allowing turn-by-turn capabilities. But unlike with other applications, the subscription will show up on your AT&T bill — not iTunes. Release.
The AT&T Navigator at Apple Apps is more reason for iPhone users to poke fun at AT&T. App stores mean cheap and good stuff from unique developers. The AT&T Navigator at $9.99 month is a packaged solution from TeleNav. AT&T has had many navigation renditions like MapQuest Mobile and uLocate. MapQuest was laughable because AT&T embedded it on the Samsung Easy Access and blocked GPS. The app was location ads for shopping and restaurants. Let's laugh again if AT&T appoints a Vice President of Mobile Navigation to give direction.
Note that the subscription fee is added to your AT&T bill and not youir iTunes bill. As a developer, should we expect to be able to bill customers outside of iTunes and save ourselves 30%??