VietNamNet Bridge – Network operators’ app stores still cannot meet the users’ requirements, while the use of foreign app stores meets payment problems. These both create opportunities for third parties to develop their app stores and stimulate the market demand.

App stores mushrooming

Do Tuan Anh, Director of AppStore Vietnam, said that there are two kinds of app stores for mobile phones. The first one includes the app stores of Apple and Google, Nokia and Samsung, i.e. the manufacturers which have their own operation systems. The big guys create app stores to provide the places for developers to create apps that run on their operation systems.

The second one includes the stores of Amazon and FPT (clients can order specific devices for themselves) – generating app stores for the products or the stores of the network operators which have big numbers of subscribers already.

The third one includes the stores of third parties, such as AppStoreVN, ViMarket and Mobile9. These do not depend on network operators or manufacturers.

In Vietnam, with App, Nokia and Google stores, both developers and users are meeting big obstacles in payment method. Besides, foreign stores could be unusable in Vietnam because they may have the contents which do not fit the Vietnamese laws (reactionary information or sensitive images).

Made-in-Vietnam app stores, such as Mstore (Viettel), Mspace (MobiFone) have a high number of users already, therefore, they do not need high creation level to earn high turnover. F-Store, which has been installed in FPT’s products FPT (F99 3G, F5, FPT Tablet, B990..), is also an app store of this kind.

The common characteristics of the app stores are that they do not have many high quality apps, while the apps sometimes have errors, with simple functions and not friendly enough interfaces to users.

“All that disadvantages would bring opportunities to develop third parties’ app stores,” Tuan Anh said.

While app development firms can easily exploit and post their products into Mstore, Mspace and Ovi, this work proves to be uneasy for separated programmers. Therefore, AppleStoreVN and third parties’ app stores want to serve as the places where Vietnamese developers can sell their apps and create most favorable conditions to users.

At present, third parties’ app stores are considered the places which shares “free and unlocked apps”. However, Tuan Anh said that if this cannot be improved, third parties’ apps would remain on the “black market” forever and could not develop sustainably.

Analysts also say that third parties should be flexibly connect app developers in order to create a “black-and-red market”, or the market, where there are both free and charged apps, like the model of Mobile9 or GetJar.

Nguyen Minh Quang, Director of VDEC, an expert in the field of mobile apps, said that if network operators can fix the problems in quality and interface, the users with good knowledge on smartphones will still keep their habit of accessing third parties’ app stores, because they fear they have to pay for nearly all the apps in the stores.

They believe that network operators build app stores not to let users use them free of charge. Meanwhile, with third parties’ app stores, users can find free apps.

Besides, with third parties’ app stores, users can find any popular apps in the world and the products of Vietnam. Meanwhile, if using network operators’ app stores, one would find only Vietnamese apps.

The future will belong to third parties?

Both Anh and Quang believe that a lot of third parties’ app stores would appear in the next year, especially Android app stores, and the demand for them would increase significantly.

“Network operators have a lot of things to do, while they would not have time to develop app stores. Meanwhile, third parties have time and efforts to support both clients and developers,” Quang explained.

Buu Dien