Sprint to partner with Openwave to take on BlackBerry App World and others?

With Verizon deciding to compete with the Android Market and BlackBerry's App World in the competitive business of offering free and paid apps to the carrier's smartphone users, Sprint is expected to announce that it too is throwing its hat into the ring. At this upcoming week's Sprint Developer Conference, the nation's third largest carrier will go public with its partnership with Openwave. The pair are working on a way to use the carrier's "scripting engine" to speed up development of apps that will work on any platform.

In making a statement about its intentions, Sprint said that combining with Openwave to open an app store will give "BlackBerry’s Marketplace and other app stores a run for their money." Of course, many of you can see the problem with that statement right off the bat.

 Former television advertising star Dan Hesse, who happens to be Sprint's CEO in his other job, is expected to make the announcement about the Openwave partnership during his keynote address kicking off the Developer Conference. Hesse will stress how Sprint's "scripting engine" will eliminate the need to develop the same app for different OS platforms.

Why go into the business of running a competing application store? The carrier says that, "The main benefit of this is to dramatically increase the reach and penetration for mobile web developers and to also easily integrate new services into Sprint’s offerings, helping to expand their service portfolio to Sprint users." Translated, this means that Sprint has identified an area of the smartphone market that hasn't been picked over yet like a Thanksgiving turkey and sees the possibility of making a few bucks opening its own app store.

source: BlackBerryCool