Verizon Wireless is aiming to become more developer friendly with a major revamp of its apps store and developer services, announced yesterday at the Verizon Wireless Developer Conference.
During the opening session, Marni Walden, chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless, boasted Verizon’s work on a number of new fronts, including LTE, as major drivers for developer innovation.
“Verizon – through the VDC, our Innovation Centers, and, most of all, our 4G LTE network – is at the forefront of innovation, providing opportunities every day for developers to deliver growth in the mobile application space,” Walden said during opening remarks, which were broadcast via a webcast of the event.
Walden said Verizon Wireless has already rolled out LTE in 117 markets, covering 160 million POPs, with plans to reach a 180 million POPs by the end of 2011.
Verizon announced a number of new features to its mobile applications storefront and developer platform. The company is working with Chomp to integrate search directly into Verizon Apps and has revamped its backend for developers in such a way as to simplify the application submission process.
The company also revealed plans for its Private Applications Store for Business. Launching later this year, the store will offer enterprise and government customers the ability to deliver customized and third-party apps to their employees.
To be sure, all of those things are openings for developers looking to leverage the reach and visibility of a major carrier. Scott Ellison, vice president of mobile and consumer connected platforms for IDC, was on hand to offer a glimpse of the growing market for mobile applications.
According to IDC, annual app downloads are expected to reach 5.4 billion in 2011 in the United States and 38 billion globally, with that number expected to quadruple by 2015. Additionally, Ellison noted that revenue from in-app purchases was expected to hit $3.1 billion in 2011 and $7.8 billion by 2015.
Ellison said he sees health, M2M, NFC, video and the cloud as areas ripe for developer innovation. As far as real game changers in the mobile space, he said that things like novel form factors and holograms on the mobile device could revolutionize the industry going forward.
