Asian mobile operators team to boost Android app development

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 21 June 2009 12:38

Business IT - Technology

Five Asian mobile operators - Far EasTone, Indosat, NTT DoCoMo, StarHub and TrueMove have joined forces to launch a "comprehensive campaign" to promote the development of Android applications in Asia.

The five companies - all members of the Conexus Mobile Alliance - plan to individually and collectively launch campaigns to encourage more domestic application developers in their respective countries to create innovative, user-friendly applications on the Android platform with the aim to boost mobile data usage across the region.

They say that, "Depending on the operator's target markets, domestic and regional application providers can expect supportive resources from participating members, including possible embedding of applications as well as aligned procurement and development of Android-enabled devices."

The best applications for Android received by mid-October will be showcased in a regional developer showcase event for Android hosted by Conexus Mobile Alliance in Hong Kong in November with the promise that "Chosen application developers will thus gain access to members of the Conexus Mobile Alliance...have the opportunity for exposure at this event...[and] selected developers may also have their applications embedded in Android handsets procured by the Alliance members, and be offered future opportunities for service creation within the Alliance."

The five operators say they will kick-start their local campaigns in their respective markets soon, and that these campaigns will include application contests, introductory programmes, seminars, and web-based developer forums in local languages.

The Conexus Mobile Alliance was formed in 2006, originally as the Asia-Pacific Mobile Alliance,  to develop and enhance international roaming and corporate mobile services for greater convenience and ease of use for its members' customers. It boasts a combined customer base in excess of 210 million mobile subscribers across its membership base of 11 operators

Its founder members were Far East One (Taiwan); Hutchison Essar (India); Hutchison Telecom (Hong Kong); PT Indosat (Indonesia); KT Freetel (South Korea); NTT DoCoMo (Japan); Smart Communication (Philippines) and StarHub (Singapore). They have since been joined by Bharti Airtel and MTNL from India and Thailand's TrueMove.

The organisation is the third, and newest, of Asian regional mobile operator alliances. It joined the Asia Mobility Initiative formed in 2003 and the Bridge Mobile Alliance formed in 2004 and which changed its name to simply Bridge Alliance in November 2007 . AMI appears largely inactive. It does not have its own web site, only a page on M1's site  and has only five members: M1 (Singapore); Celcom (Malaysia); DTAC (Thailand) SmarTone (Hong Kong) and Idea Cellular India.

Founder members Telstra and its Hong Kong subsidiary CSL have both left, with CSL joining the Bridge Mobile Alliance in 2005.  Bridge now lists Airtel, AIS, CSL, CTM, Globe, Maxis, Optus, SingTel, SK Telecom, Taiwan Mobile and Telkomsel as operator members and Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Qualcomm as associate members.

In the introduction to its Mobile alliances in Asia-Pacific report, published in March 2009, Ovum made no mention of AMI, saying "Clear competitive battle lines are drawn between Asia's mobile alliances. The two most active regional groupings are split between the Bridge Alliance and Conexus Mobile Alliance."