Windows Phone App Wish List for India

Here is the wish list of must have apps for India.

Must Have Travel Apps
1. Booking for Meru Cabs and other Cab services;
2. Metro Schedules and Live status for Delhi, Bangalore and other metros
3. Redbus, APSRTC, KSRTC etc for inter city bus travels
4. IRCTC ticket booking and IndianRail live train status for train service
5. Makemytrip and flightstats for air travel

Must Have News sites
1. ESPN Cricinfo
2. Newshunt has amazing apps on iOS and Android. You can read most of the popular daily regional and english new papers

Must Have Entertainment Sites
1. Raaga, Musicindiaonline or similar sites like Saavn for music streaming.
2. Live FM Stations RadioMirchi, Red FM etc..
3. Bigflix

Big Name Windows Phone Apps for India

I was in for a little surprise when I launched 'AppFlow' app on my Samsung Omnia with Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) last night to see a few India specific apps in the 'New and Impressive' list. Curiously all of them were launched in the Market Place on 28th December 2011. I suspect it has got some thing to do with Nokia Lumia launch. Nokia is claiming around 750 - 1000 India specific apps would be launched in the coming days.  I suspect we might see a marketing campaign launched soon to highlight the local apps.

So far I have found following official name brand apps in the Market Place.

Times Of India Link
Economic Times Link

NDTV Link

NDTV Good Times Link

IBN Live from Network 18 Link

Money Control from Network18 Link
Bollywood Hungama Link

India Today Link
Business Today Link
Mid-Day Link

Book My Show Link
Flipkart Link
SnapDeal Link
Zomato Link

How about mobile OS for non smart phones??

Device independent mobile operating systems like Palm, WM, Symbian, Blackberry all target at mobile phones with data plans/ web access and mainly aiming at providing advanced features which most of the mobile users do not need or do not want to pay for. Of course there is an option of buying these phones unlocked and just not pay for the dataplan, but there is also this mental picture in the common masses on what a smart phone means. We now have the device makers and carriers come up with their own versions of the software that they ship with the devices. There are no open standards and this system is a closed one and doesn't allow innovation. There are some java apps out there that are supported across multiple OS,
but the utility is minimal where u need to download the apps over the air?


There can be many advantages of having these open OS platforms even in the non smartphones. There can be many applications that can be designed and built for mobile phones with PC - Mobile Eco System like iPods which doesn't need web access. This would probably help the carriers and device makers move out of the software business and concentrate on providing hardware and services instead, which are their core business.

This is one rung lower than what Google is suggesting for the 700MHz spectrum. And a good first step in that direction.