China Mobile to launch own 'App Store'

China Mobile has announced plans to launch its own mobile applications store, along the lines of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market.

"We will set up our own shop, and we hope, welcome all content providers to sell their software applications and games and songs and any other products in our application shop," said chairman and CEO Wang Jianzhou, speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau.

Computerworld suggests that the store would be likely to support several different mobile platforms, including Linux and Symbian.

It would certainly have decent reach - China Mobile has more than 436.1 million subscribers.

Mobile games publishers have targeted China for many years now, but business issues as well as piracy have stopped the country from becoming a big market for many of them.