T-Mobile USA CTO Cole Brodman has confirmed that carrier billing will be coming soon for purchases made on the Android Market. While no timeframe has been set for the introduction of the service, this will allow customers the choice to bill purchases to their T-Mobile account instead of having to use a credit card for separate purchase transactions.
In related news, T-Mobile will be launching its own content channel on Android Market where the carrier will recommend selected applications to customers, with the launch expected before the Thanksgiving holiday.
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What is carrier billing? This holds some type of advantage to other forms?
Carrier billing is where downloads purchased on a third-party service (like the Android Market) are charged onto your carrier wireless bill.
Right now to purchase content on the Android Market, you must associate a Google Account with a credit card number. This is cumbersome, and potentially unacceptable, for many families with children or other authorized users. In addition, many people with wireless phones do not have credit cards.
As such, many Android customers (this is really more for future customers, but anyways) will be able to purchase downloads on the Android Market, and have the charges appear on their next monthly billing statement.
With credit cards now testing the waters with per-day interest rates, carrier billing could easily become the preferred way of charging for downloads on Android Market, Windows Mobile Marketplace, and Palm’s App Catalog.