Samsung Electronics is joining the smartphone app-store party. The Seoul, Korea-based company will open its Samsung Application Store in Italy, the United Kingdom, and France on Sept. 14.
Since February, the company has been testing a beta version of the online store in Britain. Now Samsung’s app store will be extended to more than 30 countries, including Spain and Germany, Reuters reported on Monday. Samsung plans to open the store with 300 apps, with more than 2,000 by the end of the year.
The store will be interconnected with Samsung’s developer site, Samsung Mobile Innovator, and its marketing site, Samsung Application Store Seller Site, to form an ecosystem.
“The challenge is to find business models that benefit consumers, the handset maker, and content developers at the same time,” Lee Ho-soo, a Samsung executive vice president, told the Korean Times.
The launch of Samsung’s mobile app store in Europe brings more utility to its devices, which is what consumers want, according to IDC analyst Ramon Llamas, but there are still unanswered questions.
“Since everyone is getting onto the mobile-application bandwagon one way or another, Samsung is attempting to brand its own experience to drive customer loyalty,” he said. “What remains to be seen are the kind, breadth and depth of its mobile applications. (Will it be) sports, news, information, or commerce? Those (questions) need to be answered.”
The mobile-phone company’s competitors are already ahead with their own application storefronts. Number-three handset maker LG opened its Application Store in July with 1,400 applications, including 100 free programs in 15 different languages in Asia-Pacific nations, including Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. And like Samsung, LG said it will have 2,000 apps available by year’s end.
But LG and Samsung are late to the mobile-app-store party. Apple celebrated the one-year anniversary of its App Store in…