Is Vodafone 360 turning a corner? 7,000 apps and counting

This afternoon I bumped virtually into David Marutiak, User Community Ambassador for Vodafone 360. Now, you know I’ve been pretty direct with my comments about Vodafone 360 in the past (and, well, if you click on the Mobile Industry Review frontpage you can see examples of that).

And whilst I still have significant issues with the neolithic senior management who managed the platform launch extremely poorly, I wanted to highlight a few things that demonstrate the talented folks (who’re actually running the Vodafone 360 show) are doing a good job of pulling things together.

First up, I have received my first press release from a mobile developer relating to Vodafone 360. Whilst I know Rummble has been doing some rather good work on the platform, I had a note from mobile developers SCCOPE to tell me about their new 360 app launching. More on that shortly (in another post). The fact that developers are giving Vodafone the time of day is fantastic news.

Second, the news from Vodafone that over 7,000 apps have now been made available to download across 8 European countries on the 360 platform. That’s shocking. Shockingly good news. At launch, the quality of the available apps wasn’t that staggering. But this is changing. I’ll be taking another look shortly. (You can find the press release for the 7,000 app news here.)

Third, Vodafone’s App Planet sponsorship at Mobile World Congress certainly demonstrates their commitment to working with developers. There are, I know, a lot of developers who’ll be looking curiously at the platform as a result.

Good news!