Cellmania Gives Carriers Their Own Android Marketplaces

Cellmania, a company that builds and licenses the software that drives many mobile phone stores, has launched a new platform called the Android Content Storefront for Android phones that will allow carriers and manufacturers to install their own, customized app stores on Android phones.

While Android phones already offer Google’s official app store, Cellmania CEO Ronjon Nag says that many carriers and manufacturers are looking for a way to offer their own stores, where they can feature localized content and sell media like music, ring tones, video, and graphics (none of which can currently be sold through Google’s store). The store also supports a variety of different payment plans, including subscriptions, charging purchases to the user’s phone bill, and ‘in-app’ purchases, which allow users to purchase virtual goods and other services from directly within the app.

As an added bonus to developers, Cellmania’s storefront includes software that can convert J2ME applications (which are common on many other mobile phones) into Android executables.

Cellmania has a long history with a number of major cell phone carriers and manufacturers, which puts it in a position to have its white-labeled storefronts come as default applications for some Android phones. That said, Cellmania’s third party app stores would not be Android’s first – other companies like Handango have offered their own markets too.