Finally, nearly a year after China Unicom brought iPhone to China, its official App Store is officially launched today. To be consistent with China Unicom’s 3G brand which is called Wo, the app store (formerly called UniStore since it’s beta launch in Feb 2010) is now named WoStore.
We said almost a year ago, App Store would be the next hype in Chinese mobile market. We do not really understand why it took so long for China Unicom since it’s been a year, but it is not late and also it seems that WoStore does not disappoint us in terms of the number of applications listed at the first day. 1901 applications in total are listed into 6 categories: Games (342), Tools (56), Entertainment (22), Theme (690), Life (49), Reading (742). The supported platforms include Symbian, Android, Java, Window Mobile, Linux etc. The applications price ranges from rmb 0 to 30 yuan, and 70% of the revenue is said to go to the developers . They are available to all China Unicom’s subscribers (Note, you need login with a China Unicom number) and can be downloaded to PC via http://store.wo.com.cn or directly to your mobile phone via the clients. The WoStore clients are available for several international and local brands such as Nokia, HTC, Motorola, Lenova, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, ZTE, CoolPad etc.
China Unicom recently claims its 3G subscribers have reached 10 millions and now the No.1 WCDMA network operators in the world. Obviously it has the advantage. WoStore is a late comer, but in this probably over-hyped and not-that-mature app store market, it does not really matter. What I am very curious about is what will be China Unicom’s focus? Android? Symbian? or WM? We already know that China Unicom could not have the agreement with Apple to operate Apple‘ App Store in China, but as it’s still the only partner of Apple on iPhone which really boosts China Unicom’s 3G market share in China, WoStore’s not having iOS applications which sounds a bit weird. It is NOT a WOW, I have to say, at least for now.
Thanks much for the informative post. Grab “Chinnovate Your Life” worth $29.95 when you visit @chinnovate. See how China innovation can improve your business, career and life at http://www.chinnovate.com
If wostore or unicom adds the iOS applications for I-Phone and I-Pad, they will eaisly overtake the market for smartphone applications…unicom or wostore market would explode..maybe if more consumer in China request these app, unicom will agree…Theres a buzz of many iphone and ipad developers in America, that want to get into this merging market… http://www.wostore.com
If wostore or unicom adds the iOS applications for I-Phone and I-Pad, they will eaisly overtake the market for smartphone applications…unicom or wostore market would explode..maybe if more consumer in China request these app, unicom will agree…Theres a buzz of many iphone and ipad developers in America, that want to get into this merging market… http://www.wostore.com
For the Wostore to become a global name and website, they must obtain the dot com name.. like most of their competitors have done..www.wostore.com but 1 million subscribers to the website in one year, is pretty amazing..