If Reliance Communications was thinking of its partnership with GetJar, one of the worlds largest mobile application stores, as a key differentiator...oops! As we had suspected, exclusivity was not a part of their deal. Now GetJar will now power the free mobile application store for Virgin Mobile, one of the companies that helps Tata Teleservices utilize its decongestant (rather not-fullly-utilized) network in India. Virgin has signed on as a partner for GetJar's white labelled service "App Catalogue Express"; subscribers will find a link on Virgin Mobile's WAP portal (Vbytes) on GSM across 16 circles, or have to visit http://m.virginin.getjar.com to access GetJar’s world of 70,000 apps. With that many apps, discovery must be a real pain, but GetJar gets around three million downloads per day, globally. On Virgin Mobile, only the data browsing charges of 1p/kb will be charged on access. The Apps available on GetJar, and hence on RCOM and Virgin Mobile are free, and frankly, just access doesn't offer much to a developer in India: paid applications need to be a part of the mix for there to be an incentive for Indian develoeprs to create applications. Applications are also a part of the mix for Mobango, a mobile storage, content and applications store business which Mauj acquired recently. As per Opera's State Of The Mobile Web for November 2009, GetJar and its sub-site wap.operamini.getjar.com were are the 15th and 22nd most visited mobile sites in India, while Mobango was at number 21. We expect Mobango to also be white labelled for telecom operators in…
