App Store

Trendsetter: Apple                                                                                                                    

Catch-Up Crew: Google, RIM (Blackberry), Palm, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung

Apple’s App Store is a software bazaar for downloading free and paid mobile applications.

As of this date, there are over 20,000 applications and over 500 million applications have been downloaded .

Following the success and rapid growth of the Apple’s App Store, cell phone manufacturers and software companies are releasing their own mobile app stores. There is a battle of mobile software apps brewing in this new growth engine. The future of the mobile industry will be driven by software instead of hardware.

This is a list of mobile app stores announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona:

• Nokia’s Ovi Store
• Windows Marketplace
• App Store for Symbian
• Android Market
• BlackBerry App World
• Palm Software Store