Ericsson bags order for Idea's online apps store

Telecom network equipment-maker Ericsson today said it has partnered with Aditya Birla Group firm Idea Cellular for the latter's online applications store.

Under the contract, Ericsson would be responsible for complete end-to-end service management of the online applications store, including technical operations, content eco-system partner management and testing and usability, besides business operations, Ericsson said in a statement.

"Allowing our business operations team to manage all relations and contracts and taking advantage of our existing partnerships with content aggregators and application developers, Idea is gaining a great business opportunity in the mobile applications market," Ericsson's India Head Gowton Achaibar said.

Using this solution, Idea will be able to set up a successful business in the mobile applications market and introduce new services to their subscribers, it added.

The ecosystem between Idea and Ericsson will support a developer community, bringing richer, more relevant and better applications and games to Idea subscribers, it said.

The application store will offer more than 30,000 applications -– both free and paid.

"The application store will offer a rich mobile experience through a combination of both web and mobile platforms. The store will also offer 3G applications when we launch our 3G services," Idea Cellular Director (Operations) Ambrish Jain said.