Posted 08/25/09 at 09:54:06 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Feature phones still lead smartphones by a country light-year in the global cell phone market. Their preponderance comes form their popularity in emerging markets. While a lot of the modern feature phones possess decent internet capabilities, they lack dedicated online application marketplaces.

Microsoft has launched OneApp, a cross platform app store, to deliver apps to the wide gamut of feature phones in emerging markets. Considering the limited hardware resources associated with most feature phones, the apps will be built using web development technologies like Javascript and XML, allowing them to be compatible with “70-80 percent” of all feature phones on the market.

The OneApp executable is very light (only 150 kilobytes) as it uses cloud-based resources.  It has already been rolled out to Blue Label Telecoms subscribers in South Africa. Microsoft plans to launch OneApp in other parts of the world next year, along with the official SDK.

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Posted 07/15/09 at 08:30:19 AM by Paul Lilly

Besides putting the finishing touches on Windows 7 and Office 2010, what else has Microsoft been up to lately? Perhaps gearing up to open an app store for its Zune HD media player, if trademark application 77775625 for the trademark "ONEAPP" is any indication. The application covers:

"Computer software for allowing mobile device users to send messages, make payments and access and play music, games and videos on mobile devices; computer software platforms for developing mobile applications; computer software, namely, software development tools for the creation of mobile applications; computer software for runing retail store site for purchase and download of mobile applications over wireless networks."

It's all speculation at this point, but in one part of the filing, Microsoft specifically mentions "media players," which points squarely at the Zune HD. But if that is what Microsoft's up to, the company has a lot of ground to make up with Apple announcing its App Store surpassing the 1.5 billion download mark just three months after it recorded 1 billion downloads.

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