It's goodbye to Vodafone Live! as long-awaited Vodafone 360 takes the battle to iTunes and Android
The new platform, reports The Guardian, is Voda's attempt to wrest back some initiative from the handset companies that have launched direct channels to their own stores from the device.
It is aiming to make the service available eventually to the company's 315 million global customers.
Voda confirmed the app platform in May, and promised to release APIs that would enable developers to build in billing, location and other functions into their apps.
It has been quite vociferous about allowing these apps to run via browsers rather than just being downloaded. In theory this would permit developers to offer Voda-compatible apps from any website.
Among the launch apps will be a social networking service called Vodafone People, based on the Zyb service that Voda bought last year. It will initially be launched on a new Samsung phone to be unveiled this week.
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If this is the last of Vodafone Live, many will see it as the beginning of the end for the operator portal as an idea. Vodafone Live was launched in a blaze of publicity in 2002, but like virtually every other operator deck it failed to win over the mass of mobile users.
The shortcomings of the operator storefront in terms of user experience and publisher access were shown up by the handset app store concept.
