Vodafone to Open Application Store for Many Phones

Vodafone has announced plans to get into the mobile applications action.

The differnce between this and the iPhone App Store is that Vodafone plans to let several types of phone use its store.

Concentrating initially on Symbian OS (e.g. Nokia) applications, the new app store will later open up to other operating systems and handsets such as Android – keep in mind that Vodafone is launching the HTC Magic.

Vodafone’s unique selling point for developers is that it plans to open up key parts of its network infrastructure via a software development kit (SDK), to be released this Summer.

Code written using the SDK will adhere to standards that will allow it to run on a variety of handsets, and will be able to access network data to provide location awareness (based on cell location rather than GPS) and direct billing to the user’s Vodafone account rather than via credit card, etc.

Vodafone will split profits with developers, taking a 30% cut of revenue in return for hosting the app.

Do you think this will be enough to attract people?

What would you want to see in a new app store or how would you improve the iPhone App Store?