Infy's Flypp is an app store for operators

BANGALORE, INDIA: While the telecom service providers were still mulling over the idea of starting their application store, Infosys has hit the right nail with its mobile application platform � Flypp. It plans to add analytics and insight features to its offering and host 10,000 applications in a year.

According to Infosys, this application store would reduce the time and provide cost-effective ways to the mobile operators, and help in brand extension, gaining market share and revenue generation by using applications, all in a week's time.

Launched recently, Flypp is a third-party software portal of mobile applications, which has third-party applications developers and independent software vendors who put their applications in the portal and then the mobile operator on the other end hosting these applications on their handsets.

Speaking to CIOL, Subhash Dhar, Member Executive Council and Group Head, Sales and Marketing at Infosys, said, "With the price wars, and network availability, the customer will value for the experience than the networks. And ready-to-launch value-added services will make them approach the operator and drive business."

He added here that the role of a mobile operator is pitching the application which suits to their needs and taste, but the applications that they choose, and how they provide it to the customers, will be the differentiating factor among them.

At present, while the company is looking at providing application customization service to the operators such as setting the logo, the look and feel around the page, going forward it plans to add services and analytics features to its offering.

"We look at providing a lot of analytics and insights to the customers. This would be as a value-added service to our offerings," Dhar hinted.

Elaborating on the revenue sharing model, he said that unlike the case of a mobile handset manufacturer, which maintains its own app store, this would have around four shareholders for every pie of income.

"We have the developers, business entities (who would be interested in creating the application on their offerings), Infosys and most important the mobile operators," he said. "For free application we would go for a rental-basis, while for the transaction and download application, that bring chunk of income, we would opt for revenue sharing model."

At present Flypp has got around 500 applications ready to be used. Flypp was introduced with the help of the Product Incubation and Engineering (PIE) unit, that also launched products like Digital Convergence Platform (Digital TV).