Tell o2/Bell/Palm to open the app catalog for non u.s. users

[gizmo21]

This one got to Derek Kessler in reply to his o2 behind some apps article:
http://www.precentral.net/o2-behind-...ean-webos-apps

Please Derek update this article, cause these "apps" are not more than a shortcut to the mobile websites with a big O2 banner ontop. Here @precentral you should not encourge o2 to release this adstuff, if in the same moment we non U.S. users still after 3 month get a crippled app catalog (for no reason not even the free apps are avail in germany nor uk...). O2 should be big enough to really bug palm to open the catalog worldwide, instead they give us these shortcuts. I can't understand why O2 still advertises the pre with huge streetads (here in germany) but does not force palm to give the users the full experience. And why aren't the game/app developers standing up against palm. This is a huge loss of money for them!!

I know you U.S. guys are happy right now with 3D games and pre plus, but i wish the community would stand together and bug palm to open the catalog. All this catalog feeding and palm beta apps is useless here in EU cause we always get the "This app is not for your country" error. Time is up now, if the developers can't sell or even get the free apps outside u.s. they and the users will leave the plattform.

sorry i'm kind of frustrated...

you know i do not post pointless things to you and with the palm profile desaster precentral was the one to bring this on top for palm. I hope you can help us EU (and even canadinan) users on this, so 1.4 will at least have us participate on ALL free apps. I know paid should come in march, but i think palm isn't really aware of this country specific crippling and i could bet if nothing is done, we end up with german paid apps only. And that would really s*ck...

[ShiftyAxel]

Hear hear. Blasted location-based fragmentation, Palm'd better get their act together soon and bring the EU and Canada up to permanent parity, else they risk losing customers.

[jdevora]

Hi,
I think that the catalogue should work the way around.

There should be a "worldwide" category that is ticket by default and if an application has some rights issues or something similar that makes that the app should only be available in a certain country, the developer should tick the right boxes

Cheers
JD

PS: Any suggestion for where post a "complain" to pass the message to Palm?

[gizmo21]

Feedback & Feature Requests | Palm USA is the primary adress directly to palm
o2online - Kontakt per E-Mail for o2 germany

[Andreas]

plead submited to Palm, please do the same.

[peabrain]

sounds good to me

[Tereschkova]

just wrote to palm! THIS HAS TO BE FIXED! Jesus christ this second class customer situation is freakin me out.

[gizmo21]

here is another good comment:

don't even know where to start here!

yes, o2 is behind those apps, and by now there are like 7 or 8 of them. they all are exactly alike, they display a big o2 ad banner and below an "iFrame" with the mobile web site of Xing, FriendScout, eBay, etc. loaded. That's app SPAM!!! If I load the mobile websites in the browser on my Pre, I get EXACTLY the same result, just without the annoying ad banner. So I wouldn't call that "o2 looking out for it's customers" but rather a cheap alibi or simply annoying app spam... oh... and by the way, I'd give a fortune for a REAL Xing app or better yet Synergy integration. Xing is basically LinkedIn, just wayyyyyyyyyy more popular in Europe. Then again, the one app we used to have for one of the popular social networks in Germany, StudiVZ, mysteriously disappeared from the app catalog just two weeks after it's release and has never been heard of again.

as for regional filtering in the app catalog: true, in march we'll get access to paid apps, but still, only those paid apps that are made available for a certain region, e.g Germany by their developers... so no, we won't see all the 1200 US apps popping up, instead, we'll probably end up with about 300 apps instead of the 120 free apps we have now. while I get the basic idea that a developer is allowed to select where in the world his app is available, the problem here are both, Palm and the developers. If they want to make an app available in e.g. Germany, Palm is forcing them to enter a German description, etc. for their app, so from a developers point, the simplest way to submit an app is just to leave that check-mark for Germany unticked. they can't earn money on the German market anyway as of now, so why would a developer go through all that fuss of filling out even more annoying fields in the app submission process, just so his app is available in Germany, too. Palm's providing no motivation for developers to go through that extra fuss. The only good thing here is, that once developers can milk German customers for money, too, they finally have the motivation they need to do that extra work. So I guess, while in march when the European app catalog opens for paid apps we won't see that big bang with ALL of the apps immediately available, we'll see more and more developers releasing their apps for the European markets withing the weeks and months following march.

As for me, I'm just being realistic here. I'm extremely disappointed by how Palm handles all this. I've paid quite some money for Pre, just to lose access to the initial 300 app after a few weeks in order to wait for months to maybe get access to some more apps again, most of them being paid apps then probably. So the above basically describes what I'm expecting to see over the next months, not what I'm hoping for, because that would be a lot more. Palm should have focused on the European market much more, especially before releasing two new phones on another carrier in the US. That's just frustrating, annoying and very disappointing.

Submitted by jurtrx on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 06:06.
reply

are there any specific URLs of o2 UK, moviestar in spain, bell canada to post suggestions to?

[mrloserpunk]

I did. I called Ruby up and said, "Boy, you better open up that app store in march"

He agreed.

[NuttyBunny]

Mexico anyone?

[schmuck]

We need the paid apps up here in the cold dark north, aka Canada, what else am I going to be doing when the Olympics are on, I mean there is no snow and no way of feasibly getting around town, I need some paid games.

[Ka-Efka]

I thought I heard Palm officials saying they were serious about Europe... Well I'm seriously disappointed.
If they would at least be open and communicate about it. But nohting besides that vague 'March' statement. Which itself came extremely late after the local restricitions were imposed and 'deleted' almost all apps from the non-US catalogue.
And with the beta and web only feeds they repeate the same stupidity. Unbeliveable.
What comes next?

[flea]

i dont read much of the news these days ,but i did just read about this.

HORRIFIC. i'm not affected, as I'm stateside, but this is absurd to think its this way.

tsk tsk, palm

[gizmo21]

another one not for us:

http://m.precentral.net/slacker-radio-lands-webos

[Roisen]

I'm pretty sure the problem lies more in actually conducting business in other countries. There are probably tax and tariff issues; lots of paper-pushing to be done.

Obviously it makes good business sense to open the full catalog to the entire world, so there has to be an equally sensible reason for why they haven't yet. I appreciate your frustration, but complaining to them will just result in a "We're working on it".

Now that I've said all of that I suppose I should ask if Palm has released an official statement as to why they haven't expanded the catalog to be worldwide.

[gizmo21]

Well we already had worldwide the same freeapps app catalog till the paidapps catalog came to the u.s. and in the same event the catalog was scattered into country specific parts (even for the freeapps).
Perhaps the barrier for developers to release wordwide is really to high because of necessary entries to be made.

It's really crazy not to release an free english U.S. App not in the english speaking UK. Even if location based apps couldn't have info about your region, you could use it on a trip to the US.

[Ka-Efka]

I already purchased programs from Palm. Palm Europe. Was no problem. Not even a year ago. So whats so complicated with the AppCat?
Not to mention all the free progams...