Samsung Readying Smartphone App Store

Samsung has announced that it will launch a smartphone application store on September 17 in several countries across Europe on September 14 – that’s two weeks from now.

This comes months after Samsung had launched its UK specific “generic” app store that interestingly has content for smartphones as well. It s perplexing as to why Samsung did not extend the availability of that website to other countries, instead of launching an entirely new store.

As for the App Store, the Samsung Store will initially offer 300 applications with the number increasing to 2000 by year-end. From Samsungpps.com users would soon be able to purchase applications by credit card. There will also be an option to buy them over the air with the charges being credited to the user’s phone bill. Another option that will be offered is an inbuilt application on the phones that would enable downloads over Wi-Fi/GPRS/3G. Initially, only the Samsung Omnia HD will be supported by the App Store. Support for more devices will be added soon.

The announcement of this App Store comes a month after Samsung announced it’s developer portal to be open for submitting applications. This store will be initially available in UK, France and Italy before trickling in to other countries.