T-Mo planning iPhone app store equivalent?

T-Mobile USA has announced it’s planning on taking a leaf out of Apple’s book by opening up its development platform. The end result? A T-Mobile-a-like of the iPhone App Store, according to a report on Moconews, which will let developers submit their apps designed for T-Mobile phones in return for a share of the revenue generated when users download it.

What’s interesting about this deal is that T-Mobile is aiming to make the app store work across all its devices, from the whizz-bang smartphone to the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin lower end feature phone. Or, to put it another way, whether your device is Windows Mobile, Symbian, Java, or what have you, the apps will work regardless.

There’s no specifics from T-Mo about this but we can only hope it’s true. I guess the most interesting thing about this is why more operators haven’t tried to do it before – surely the ideal situation is that mobile users don’t have a clue what operating system they’re using, because every service and piece of software will just work painlessly.