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Telstra (re)launches am app store (again)

Is it over the top to keep fighting over the top players with the same underwhelming idea?

Telstra has taken the defibrillator to the in-house app store idea, announcing the business-focussed Telstra Apps Marketplace.

Launched with two apps – DocuSign (digital transactions) at AU$10 a month and Box (collaboration) at $6.60 a month – the marketplace is pitched as “a one-stop shop to find, buy, and use today’s best business apps”.

Both the launch apps received investment from Telstra Ventures.

It's not the first time the carrier has tried to curate mobile apps. Its 2008 T-Suite claims 400,000 users with apps like “Microsoft Office365, Symantec, McAfee and more recent apps like ArisApp, Canvas and GeoOp”. T-Suite will be progressively migrated into the Apps Marketplace by “early next year”, the carrier says.

Those with even longer memories will recall Telstra's enthusiasm for a j/v with NTT to bring DoCoMo's i-Mode to Australia, back in 2004, offering “rich content, multimedia, games and applications”, an initiative that lasted until 2007.

The latest effort is based on in-house research that suggests while nearly everybody with a smartphone is an app user – even SME owners, at 92 per cent for personal use – “only 24 per cent are using apps in their business”.

An odd aspect of the research is that Telstra claims “41 per cent are in the dark about their existence entirely”, which suggests at least some people use personal apps without knowing they're using apps.

The carrier also reckons 75 per cent of SMEs spend “up to $1,000 each year on paper”. ®

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