All this is fine, said Tom Cheong, VP and GM Asia Pacific, Motricity, but the key is access. "You may have the best piece of content but if you don't have access, it won't work even for free apps downloads," he said.

Motricity is in the 'business-to-operator' space and provides an integrated, scalable managed service platform, known as the mCore platform to mobile operators. It has offices in India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore in the region. Its clients include Reliance and Axiata.

With so many platforms, the challenge for app developers is to get noticed, to get distributed properly, he said. "Even making it to the top list is not enough," he said. On the other hand, operators face competition from the app stores such as the ones run by Apple and Google. "The way forward is personalised app stores."