Wendong’s Smart Phone Weblog

I was excited when the news about T-Mobile’s brand new “App Store” first leaked last month. It was all about how it will be different from the “traditional carrier deck”. Now the official T-Mobile DevParner Community is open. WapReview has a detailed review on it. It is a huge disappointment to me. I did not see anything new comparing to the “traditional carrier deck”. On the contrary it is much worse than any Java ME carrier decks in the US such as the ones from AT&T or Sprint.

Certification

Applications must be tested, verified and signed. Is this needed for protecting customers from vicious applications? No. That is just an excuse for the carrier to abuse Java ME signing for its own advantage. T-Mobile even blocks unsigned applications from network access. I am a T-Mobile customer because I still keep a good deal of an old plan. But I usually just buy unlocked phones instead of handicapped handsets from the carrier.

Testing price

The testing price (~$200 per handset) is prohibitive. I could not imagine any freeware developer could spend that amount of money to put his/her free software on T-Mobile Deck. Symbian signing has free program for freewares. Apple iPhone App Store will list free softwares for free. I know the price is still cheaper than True BREW Testing from Qualcomm, but Java applications are supposed to be safer than native code, thus the testing should be easier and cheaper.

No games

Unfortunately I think games are majority of the Java ME application sales. In last year’s JavaOne, one session’s title was something like “how mobile developers work with carriers”. One representative from a major carrier in US said if you are a mobile game developer and your name are not one of the big names such as EA, just forget about it. I guess T-Mobile has deals with those big name companies, which are worrying innovations from small development shops (and individual developers) will kill their revenue stream.

Via Apple’s App Store, individual developers like Eliza Block and Steve Demeter will become millionaires with their popular games. T-Mobile does not even give you a chance to make a penny.

Greedy 50%+ split

Five years ago, I checked the revenue split rate of Handango. It was 30% or 40% (I could remember the exact number). I thought that was a big chunk. It might make some sense if the application uses network bandwidth intensively. However for simple applications, what T-Mobile provides is just a distribution channel. It is the developer who makes the big investment in front and takes the risk in case of commercial failure. 50% and even more split by T-Mobile does not make any sense to me.

An ideal Carrier App Store to me should be:

(1) Certification is only for developer identification purpose. All APIs should be open to developers. Let end users set permissions (per app) on API accesses such network, PIM, file etc.
(2) Reasonable testing price to cover the cost. Free application should be listed for free.
(3) Do not deny applications unless it has really improper content (like violence and porn). Let the end users make the judgment and vote.
(4) Do not make carrier deck the sole source. Users should have other choices to install apps to their own devices.

I am thinking about getting a T-Mobile G1 as my next phone. Now the T-Mobile DevParner news makes me a little nervous. I hope tomorrow’s Android Dream announcement will not turn out to be a big disappointment. We will see, a few hours later.