Rogers has officially blown their doors open to the mobile developer community and announced their Rogers Catalyst beta program. Developers can sign up for free and start developing apps using Rogers’ APIs including SMS, location-based services (LBS) and carrier billing. Rogers states in a release today that the beta program is “designed to enable the cost-effective, fast creation of mobile apps and services customized for the Rogers network.”
It makes a great deal of sense for Rogers to do this and a bit expected too. At the 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit Nadir Mohamed, Rogers President and CEO, was speaking about the future of mobile technology and how apps will come into play. He stated that “The third model is carriers that actually embrace and lead the storefront side and have essentially an application center that they own and compete with along with the RIM’s, the Apple’s, Android Google platform”. So eventually you can bet the apps produced by those who join in on the Catalyst program will turn into a Rogers App Store. Which is a good move to offer their customers more apps (as long as they are all free).
Check out the Rogers Catalyst beta program here
