Microsoft brings mobile apps to emerging markets

Microsoft is targeting customers in developing countries with a system that lets developers make mobile apps for affordable, low-end handsets. The OneApp service will be a single gateway for users to access simplified versions of popular apps such as Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger from memory-light 'feature phones'.

The move is part of Microsoft's ongoing push into the mobile space and follows a disappointing fiscal year in which its share of the mobile operating system market fell. By focusing on emerging markets, Microsoft is appealing to a much larger audience than the one served by smartphone makers. The move could establish Microsoft as a standard app platform for hundreds of low-end phones.

"In the past, developers have found creating feature phone applications difficult due to the wide variety of handsets," says Microsoft. "OneApp allows independent software vendors to develop an application once, and have it reach a wider audience and work on all feature phones that have OneApp installed, rather than developing and maintaining an app for 50 or 100 different kinds of phones."

OneApp will be available to download free and will appear as a single application on users' phones. The app takes up just 150kB of space, making it suitable for phones with limited memory or processing capacity. Apps that run through the service will use just 30kB of memory.

The service will allow users to run web applications, such as Facebook, by only launching the core elements of the app. The system will rely on cloud computing services to handle much of the required processing and storage, and will use data networks to reduce access charges.

The app will launch in South Africa, in partnership with Blue Label Telecoms, before receiving a wider roll-out. Microsoft claims it is "working with others in emerging markets worldwide" and says the OneApp software development kit is due by the end of 2009. This will let third-party developers build new apps for the service.

Blue Label will incorporate the app as part of its forthcoming Mibli consumer mobile service. It will ship with 12 applications including news, weather and sports apps. New apps are planned focusing on services such as healthcare and mobile payments.

"What we’re letting you do is get access to the applications and services you want from a device you already own," says Tim McDonough, Microsoft's senior director of mobile product management. "If you don’t own a PC, or you share a PC, your mobile phone may be your first or only computing device."

"Developers can dive into specific needs of users in different places. What might be relevant to India may not be so relevant to China or South Africa," McDonough adds.

Earlier this month Facebook began trialling a stripped-down, 'lite' version of its social network in an effort to target users with slower internet connections. MySpace did the same in April, producing a pared-down version of its service that stripped embedded media from profile displays to optimise the site for users with slower web connections.