O2 behind some European webOS apps 37

You said "of at least three German-language webOS apps" but you listed four?

Look, your just gonna make us Bell Pre owners go mad okay? So back off ;)

I'm afraid this ain't a good thing at all. If you could only see those apps, you'd be ashamed.

All those apps do is add a big fat O2 banner on the top and then just display the mobile webpage of Xing, eBay, Friendscout24 etc. below. As such, they're not apps, they're merely a shortcut to the mobile webpages of those services. All those apps get 1 star ratings at best in the app catalog and people are furious about O2 for even advertising them as apps.

And I agree, it's really embarrassing for O2 and for us as Palm Pre owners.

Here's a perfect example... See the screenshot at the top of this article? All this app does it display http://m.n24.de. And it even adds a silly O2 banner at the top, that steals your screen estate. Wish Palm would remove those fake-apps from the catalog completely.

the worst of all I guess that this opens the doors for illegal software downloads. Can you believe how frustrating it is to see how people in the us can enjoy the full app catalog? Is PALM thinking germans are not able to speak or read some english?? In germany almost anybody is able to. We don't even have the demo for asphalt 5!! Can you believe this? At least webos-internals bring some playable 3d to the german palm world. The O2 apps more then suck. And there are even more. Funniest thing of all we already have an app for a news paper called BILD but O2 ist still providing a shurtcut to the mobile webpage. We are getting spamed by O2.

"Xing is a business social networking site similar to LinkedIn and popular in Germany"

and this is one of webOS flaws. in Germany linkedIn is not very widely used, but Xing is widely used. but as there is no synergy interface, it is not possible to enhance webOS to include Xing in Synergy. And as Xing is mainly popular in Germany Palm will probably never include it. so if you are not using American mainstream community sites, you are screwed, as there is not possibility -- to my knowledge -- the enhance synergy, or am I wrong?

I'm also a bit worried about the localization of the app store. I hope you can adjust which languages you can see and eveeybody is able to download all apps worldwide. I know there are quite a few Americans and Britisch living in Germany. I'm pretty sure they'd prefer to use the Englisch version of apps instead of being forced to use the German version just because you happen to live there. I know I do.

And yes, these O2 weblinks diguised as apps are a joke. In some of their descriptions it says that they will be updated with more functionality, let's hope for it.

And

I'm sure Palm interest is to fully open the App Catalog for all customers asap, so I wonder, what prevents them to do so until March? (may it be a legal problem?). And I agree with JuJulian that this is already causing people to get "creative" with their phones (learn how to load illegal software on it).

Come on Palm, speed up and fully open the Pre to the world. If I'd be on board that may be a Prio 1 task.

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.

well said jurtrx. We the users should now bug our carriers to have palm open up the catalog:

http://forums.precentral.net/general-webos-chat/227646-tell-o2-bell-palm...

well said jurtrx. We the users should now bug our carriers to have palm open up the catalog:

http://forums.precentral.net/general-webos-chat/227646-tell-o2-bell-palm...

well said jurtrx. We the users should now bug our carriers to have palm open up the catalog:

http://forums.precentral.net/general-webos-chat/227646-tell-o2-bell-palm...

well said jurtrx. We the users should tell our carriers that palm has to open the catalog to all countries:

http://forums.precentral.net/general-webos-chat/227646-tell-o2-bell-palm...

I agree with most of what has already been said and I am regularly posting my alternative comments on the 'new in the app catalog' section of precentral news.

Besides the cultural difference and the typical US-blindness towards Europe I suspect that Palm made some kind of deal with a creditcard payment firm limited to the US and they have to wait until it runs out.

Just a couple of points some of which were already mentioned:

1. We know you guys dont speak our languages but we do speak yours. So when it comes to apps, there should be no wellmeant language barrier in the app store. I mean im sure there are thousands of european preusers that would like to buy these 3D games for instance. No problem if they are in english.

2. Instead of dividing up access by region, just introduce tags which show for which market the app is suited. That makes chosing them easier.

3. Europeans dont live in huts, have electricity and guess what credit cards too! I am sure Palm and developers have been losing a couple of hudreds of thousands od dollars in the last couple of months just because they are only selling apps in the US. What kind of business model is that???