There’s no shortage of app stores for phones and tablets. Most popular mobile operating systems include their own app shops, stores, and marketplaces. But device makers and wireless carriers often decide to load their own stores too… just in case you’d rather download a game from the Verizon Apps store than the Google Play Store for some reason.
Oh yeah… and so they can try to get a cut of the revenue that would otherwise go to Google.
Apparently that hasn’t worked out too well for Verizon though, because the wireless carrier has announced it’s shuttering its app store starting in January, 2013.
Between January and March, Verizon will remove the Verizon Apps software from all Android and BlackBerry devices that had previously featured it.
The company acknowledges that there are plenty of other places to get the same apps that are currently available in Verizon Apps, including the Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore, and BlackBerry App World.
Verizon has already stopped accepting new app submissions from developers.
via All Things D
If they had something that was not available from the other places, then it would make sense to them to have their own app store, otherwise, it is just redundant.