Verizon Wireless Readies App Developer Support for Android

Verizon Wireless will "soon" introduce a comprehensive App development platform for Android OS, says Jennifer Byrne, Executive Director of New Business Development & Partnership at Verizon Wireless. The developer kit has been available for the RIM platform. In addition to providing development tools, Verizon is providing advertising support with the integration of AdMarvel, she explains. I caught up with her yesterday in New York at the paidContent Mobile conference where she was a speaker

Verizon Wireless Readies App Developer Support for Android Jennifer Byrne: Essentially, we’ve developed the V Cast Apps Store. We’ve rolled out on RIM devices which will soon be making available across other OS’s including Android. And it really gives the developer the chance to templatize and envision and create whatever the experience may be whether it’s to extend their TV brand to a mobile application or to provide some level of social interaction of any type, really — integrating Facebook or Twitter for example. And what we’ve enabled as a platform to really allow developers to choose how they develop their application on which OS’s and really quickly and seamlessly submit their application for publishing within a matter of days or weeks. And we’ve really been working hard to perfect the system so that we really condense the timeframe for developers when they can quickly get their application to market. We’ve learned a lot over the last nine months or so and we’re really looking forward to the availability of the app store on Android devices. Male: Tell us about the advertising opportunity. How does that work? It’s sort of like an ad network in a sense or — Jennifer Byrne: Yes. So we announced a partnership with AdMarvel which if you go to developer.verizon.com, it’ll give you the information around the API’s that we make available, including the AdMarvel API which essentially allows the developer to utilize the Admarvel solution to then plug-in to several different ad networks including Milleneal Media among others so that we really — what we want to do is empower developers to choose how they monetize their application, how they develop it, how they market it and really just grow the number of tools that we make available for the community. Male: How about how open the application platform is? In other words, for them to find out how many views there are or metrics, is it open, is it closed, what’s available? Jennifer Byrne: Well today, as you’ve probably have seen in android marketplace, you can clearly see the number of downloads as well as user ratings. So we hope in partnership with Google and some of the Verizon work that we’re doing is to work to provide more data and more analytics overtime. First mission is to make sure the app store works properly. Second mission is to start to roll out additional tools such analytics among others and you’ll hear more from us soon in particular at the Verizon Developer Conference in September. We’ve been doing great. We obviously have built out capacity in an aggressive way, both on 3G and are working even more aggressively on 4G to really meet the demand of open devices and selling millions and millions of those open devices. So you’ll start to see a lot of news coming later this year on the 4G rollout and then to 2011. Male: The network is holding okay? Jennifer Byrne: It is, yes. We — I don’t think you can read many negative stories on that front. So we’ve really built our brand behind the network and we spent a lot of time and resources to do so. And by acquiring additional spectrum, we want to continue to excel in that area. Male: And what can people expect with the Lite — the 4G? And I know that it’s not the devices this year. It’ll be more like cards and — what’s going to be available this year and what’s exciting about that? Jennifer Byrne: I think what we’ve disclosed publicly has been accessed to 4G via a broadband card. Going into 2011, you’ll start to see an array of connected devices just as you’re seeing in 3G, more than likely smart phones and other connected devices which you’ll hear more about starting in early 2011. Male: If you people, spend time on - sites. And again, this is per month not per week. So the average number of sites that are regularly accessed is 4.5. I think I heard this morning that —