SMS GupShup to launch App Store ' AppShup

The key factor behind the success of any business is to constantly keeping up pace with new things and innovations in its services and SMS GupShup is the one company that certainly seems to follow the rule. For a fairly new company that has seen its inception in April 2007, it was a landmark to get an investment deal worth $12 million recently and now the company has come up with another offing from its wings. SMS GupShup, conceptualized on a twitter-like service in India accessed via SMSs, is now coming up with the launch of an "App Store'.

Since its existence, the company has witnessed rapid growth in terms of its reach to mobile users. It now serves 26 million users across India that would only justify the popularity that mobile devices share in India. The company's research shows interesting facts that sees a meager 50 million web users against a whopping 550 million mobile phone users with a 10 to 1 mobile-to- PC ratio. Clearly, serving through SMSs is the strongest point for the company to exploit the Indian market as it is the most popular medium of communication in today's world. The fact itself that SMS GupShup processes over 480 million messages and is accountable for 5 per cent of all text messages sent within India, speaks volumes about the company's growth.

The idea behind the launch of an App Store is not only to expand its wings to avenues, but would also enable the developers to create mobile applications and widgets based on SMS adding up to the micro blogging service.

Known as AppShup, it would provide API platforms for the developers to use so that they can create and connect them with the GupShup team. To simplify it for developers to submit apps, it would also pre-enable carrier approval processes. With more than 100 SMS apps including - Tic Tac Toe, Cricket Quiz, Word Jumble etc, already being available for free. The company is also holding discussions with carriers in other countries as well in order to spread and expand the program.

With India being recognized as a potential space for social marketing activities and networking websites like - orkut, facebook and even twitter becoming such a hit with Indian masses, it only makes sense for SMS GupShup to come up with an idea of an App Store and releasing APIs to developers. The company has clearly foreseen the huge potential that mobile social networking has in store in near future and such an activity would only create a platform to exploit it. In the process, it has already created an environment that has attracted networking platforms to keep an eye on its developments. Last year, Facebook was seen partnering with SMS GupShup in order to enable its users to update status messages through text messages. Adding to it, SMS GupShup has not missed out on any kind of advertising possibility too and over 100 advertisers run on the network including the likes of ICICI Lombard, PUMA, Microsoft and Cadbury.

Clearly, there seems to have a lot of planning and strategy gone in place for SMS Gupshup's activities to make the best use of people's addiction towards social networks and mobile usage in India. The future looks bright with the current happenings and undoubtedly promising too. The impact of the apps however would only be interesting to be seen especially with giants like Twitter being around.