China Unicom has reportedly started the public test of its online application store Wostore and the platform will be formally put into operation later this month.
With the formal launch of Wostore, China's three major telecom operators will all have their own application stores. At the same time, the online application market will become a new battlefield for the three companies.
According to China Unicom, its Wostore offers applications of six major categories, including games, tools, entertainment, phone themes, lifestyle, and reading. By October 25, 2010, there have been 2,147 applications available in Wostore, of which 890 are theme-related applications and 751 are reading-related applications. Users can download the client of Wostore to their computers or mobile phones. They also need to select the brand and mode of their mobile phones when downloading applications. At present, Wostore supports mobile phone of 11 brands, including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ZTE, Dopod, and Coolpad.
Prior to this, China Mobile launched its application store Mobile Market in September 2009, and now has over 30,000 applications; while China Telecom also launched its application store in March 2010, and it has over 4,000 applications with over 3.2 million reported downloads.