Madrid, 9 September 2009. Telefonica, the world’s leading operator for music, videogames and television, has announced the opening of its mstore today, which will offer a catalogue of more than one thousand mobile applications. The shop will be universal and open to all types of customers. It will be easy to use, direct and optimised to the capacity and possibilities of all types of handsets from the main manufacturers.
The new store will form part of a global project that will eventually reach Telefonica’s more than 200 million mobile customers around the world, although the initial phase will consist of a local launch that will benefit almost 10 million Movistar customers in Spain, which will exceed 12 million over the coming weeks.
Guillermo Ansaldo, Chairman of Telefonica Espa¤a, remarked that “mstore is part of Telefonica’s strategy to bring mobile broadband to our customers, by complementing the value of data flat rate and giving customers quick access to a new world of applications for entertainment, lifestyle and utilities”.
With mstore, Telefonica will also be providing the large international community of developers with a channel and top level shop window for reaching the final consumer, regardless of the type of handset.
The store will be launching with more than 1,000 applications, which have been classified into 14 categories: Games, Dictionaries, Entertainment, Finance, Health, GPS-Maps, Information, Photos and Videos, Social Networks, Travel and Books, Sports, Shopping, Tools and Education/Children.
Applications already available from mstore include programmes to translate into and from Spanish, a large range of travel aids with city metro maps and flight schedules, up-to-the-minute news applications and television’s most popular TV series, expense management software, sending notes, photo album management, recipes, magic tricks, personality tests, the tarot, as well as games. These can be downloaded by a simple click on the terminal. A new icon will appear on the phone a moment later giving direct access to the application downloaded.
Programmes cost anywhere between 0.49 euros and 19.99 euros (not including VAT), however, don’t forget that more than 10% of them are free of charge.
The new mstore will be accessible from the movistar emocion portal, and new handsets sold by movistar will give access through an icon on the mobile’s own menu.
Telefonica leads Spain for Third Generation applications and services development, and currently has more than 8 million customers. Its network covers more than 80 per cent of the population in 3G, which is 9% above the European average and 92 per cent in 3.5G in towns with more than 50,000 inhabitants.