Apple’s App Store is the flavour of the month in the mobile world. Everyone in mobile wants to have their own. At the Mobile World Congress operators and manufacturers were all jumping on the bandwagon and announcing their individual flavour of App Store, coming soon to a phone near you.
What wasn’t mentioned is how the App Store is redefining the relationships between the customer, the handset manufacturer and the network operator. I believe that it has the potential to drastically change the balance, with the network operator being emasculated and facing a future of becoming the dreaded “dumb pipe”. There may be a way out for them, but it will involve their thinking along very different and radical lines.