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Operators are determined to stamp their brand and control on the app store craze, and one after another they are launching their own takes on the famous App Store, tying users into a network rather than a particular handset or operating system. 3 Austria and Orange are the latest to move, emulating early initiatives from T-Mobile, Vodafone and others.

The Austrian store is likely to be a template for the rest of the 3 Europe group. Like many carriers, the cellco is not opting to support every handset in its portfolio, as some like T-Mobile are promising, but is concentrating on its largest installed base, Symbian and, for the midrange, most Java devices.

The first handset to showcase the store and come with it preloaded is the new Sony Ericsson Satio. 3 Austria's CEO Berthold Thoma said the service offers applications in 14 different categories, including business, communication, entertainment, information and social networking.

Over at Orange, the French giant has been planning a cross-platform store that unifies content across phones, PCs and TVs. Its first commercial offering, debuting in the UK and France and soon to reach other territories, is rather more modest than that, though it does boast 5,000 apps. However, as with many carrier stores, the vast majority of those 'apps' are actually small pieces of content, such as ringtones, making the stores, in the first phase at least, not too radical a departure from the old operator shopfronts. Orange App Shop will have 3,000 screensavers, wallpapers and ringtones, though its big seller looks to be a list of 2,000 games. Most items will be paid-for, with prices between €4 and €5 - the cellco is certainly seeing this as a revenue stream, facilitated by carrier billing, rather than a way to lure more users via free content.

The App Shop will be accessible from RIM, Android and Windows Mobile handsets initially and later spread to Symbian, and like 3 Orange will support the Java featurephones that still make up the bulk of its installed base. Reaching out to this large user base is one way that carriers can differentiate their stores from those that are tied to a smartphone platform such as Android. Of course, although the iPhone is a flagship handset for the carrier in France and the UK, this is confined to Apple's own store.

Apps can be paid for by a registered credit card or the customer's monthly bill. The first devices to come with the store preloaded will be the latest Samsung Omnia models and the Sony Ericsson Satio and Aino (the latter France-only), with models from LG, HTC and RIM to follow. Owners of Sony Ericsson's W995, C905, C510, W595, W910i and Yari, and Nokia's 6700 and 6303, will get access to the store after accepting an over-the-air update. In January, Orange will start preloading the App Shop on some of those models. Next year, Spain, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Slovakia, Belgium, Austria, Moldova and Portugal will also get their own shops.

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