Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) will next month announce it’s building a new mobile apps developer network on top of its UK subsidiary O2’s existing programme, despite admitting it hasn’t been a great success.
Litmus launched in December 2008 to let savvy subscribers test and rate the newest in apps across various operating systems.
“If I gave Litmus a scorecard grade, it would be a six out of 10,” Litmus’ own head James Parton tells paidContent:UK, adding it’s has been a “challenge” to execute.
But Telefonica isn’t canning Litmus; quite the opposite – it’s promoted Parton to group level to oversee developer programmes worldwide, and will relaunch Litmus under a new name and with a new business model at Mobile World Congress in February.
The new scheme will offer APIs to develop apps not just for O2 in the UK but across the rest of the operator’s footprint in Europe and Latin America.
Right now, Litmus is a world away from the likes of iPhone’s app store, which numbers about 100,000 apps: “We don’t have any active app (being sold through our retail channels),” Parton said. People can buy apps through the Litmus site, though. “We have one (retail app) in development in the next two months.”
Currently, Litmus developers get 70 percent of revenues from any apps that have been purchased; this could well change, Parton says. Additionally, the changeover will include partnerships with other companies like handset makers – names also to be announced in February. This will be in line with a new-look app store that Telefonica wants to implement across its operations. This project is being overseen by Tanya Field, O2’s mobile data chief.
Parton claims Litmus has had a “solid” start, having gone from “no credibility” among developers to having 925 of them, across 64 countries, sign up to the service. In total, 663 apps have been developed on O2’s APIs.
But the slow-moving process of getting those apps into a more retail environment rather than a specialised developer area, points to some of the challenges that operators still have in capitalising on the current craze for mobile data services. Indeed, when asked for a good example of the kind of app he would like to see coming out of Litmus – or whatever it will be called post-February – Parton points to one app, myO2, a customer account management tool that was developed at O2 itself.
There is some evidence of developer programs for mobile apps in some of Telefonica’s markets already, such as Spain and Mexico, but this will be the first time that Telefonica will try to coordinate these activities in a kind of uber-developer pool.
Separately, O2 UK opened project that pleges to buy for up to £1 million ($1.6 million) the developer of a successful web service for small enterprises.
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