Verizon App Store shutting down for good in January

Verizon Wireless is closing down its app store by January next year, it stated in a notice on its developer community portal. Verizon first unveiled its apps market in 2010 under the name VCast App Store, and later revised it to the much simpler Verizon Apps.

Verizon said it was closing the app store since most of the apps available through Verizon Apps can also be found in other stores, including the Verizon tab of Google Play. It reassured developers that they had nothing to worry about, as most apps on Verizon Apps are already available on other major app storefronts, such as Google Play &  Amazon App Store. Verizon has recently introduced carrier billing for purchases from the Google Play Store.

Verizon will started sending out notifications to its customers starting this month, and will remove the Verizon Apps the App store from devices in January, via a pushed software update. That done, Verizon will then start pulling off apps from its storefront through January.

Apps which require a monthly license check validation will be removed sooner, so that customers don’t purchase them, only to find that they can’t use them after a couple of months. Since there is no clear comment from Verizon on apps that don’t require a monthly licence validation and have already been installed by users, it is assumed that those apps will continue to work as they did. However, most apps that were available on Verizon Apps can also be downloaded from the Google Play Store or Amazon App Store. So users will ideally not face any inconvenience with the shutdown.