Oh Apple, you used to be so cool with your mobile computing platform and your ubiquitous application store. Now, everyone has gone and shown up to the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona and announced their own application store for their own mobile computing platform. Now, instead of the just the Apple iTunes App store, there are going to be no less than seven application stores for seven different mobile platforms.

There is going to be the Nokia's Ovi Store, Windows Marketplace, App Store for Symbian, Android Market, BlackBerry Applications Center and the Palm Software Store. Now granted, the Palm store has been around since December, and the Android Market has been on the block since October, but the application store seems to be the way things are headed. Apple, I have to admit, did get this digital distribution thing right on the iPhone platform. I can attest that I have used the iTunes App store much more than I had ever anticipated, and they have earned a fair chunk of my money.

I am curious to see what other industries are going to follow Apple's suit. Will the next PSP have a media slot, or will games be downloaded? With broadband speeds creeping up and applications becoming smaller and more nimble, I suppose it won't be long before all software is simply digital.

via Macrumors.