Reliance Comm, U.S. firm tie up for application stores

Reliance Communications Ltd, India's No. 2 mobile services firm, said on Tuesday it had entered into a pact with Silicon Valley-based GetJar for mobile application services. Reliance will offer GetJar's catalog of more than 65,000 free mobile applications to its GSM as well as CDMA customers, the Indian operator said in a statement. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. India's leading mobile firms such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance are launching online mobile applications stores, opening up a new revenue stream from add-on services such as music and social networking. Bharti said last month its mobile applications store had clocked more than 2.5 million downloads in its first month of launch, with users in smaller cities leading.