Motorola opens Chinese app store

Resurgent vendor Motorola opened the doors of its Android focused app store in China on Friday, paving the way for the company’s assault on the burgeoning Chinese mobile market.

The Shop4Apps, or Zhi-Jian-Yuan, which means “Place for Apps Wisdom” in Chinese, will allow users to download apps and customise their Android-based handsets with new services including a search provider of their own choice.

The search providers available are the government sanctioned local providers like Baidu, and probably exclude the likes of Google, which is in the middle of a political dispute with the Chinese government.

Google isn’t launching its own-brand Android devices, like the Nexus One, in China, and is threatening to pull its local search engine amid censorship concerns and allegations that Chinese hackers broke into Google services and gained access to the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. So the Motorola launch sees Android coming to the Chinese market without Google’s support.

Motorola will take its recently unveiled MotoRoi device to China via China Unicom and will also release OPhone devices based on China Mobile’s own Android-based platform.

Motorola said Shop4Apps will give developers a path to promote their applications in the market through MotoDev, Motorola’s global developer program, and through other Android development ecosystems like OPhone.

In related news, Android backer Google announced 17 per cent year over year growth taking its fourth quarter 2009 revenues to $6.67bn, while fourth quarter net income came in at $1.97bn, compared to $382m in the fourth quarter of 2008.