LIVE FROM APPS WORLD, LONDON: Deutsche Telekom is differentiating its app developer services with a component marketplace and white-label technology that can be customised.

“It’s a market worthwhile to go for, however it’s a big, big challenge, especially for operators. It’s very hard to differentiate,” said Deutsche Telekom VP for partnerships and business development, Thomas Morsdorf, at the Apps World event in London this week.

Deutsche Telekom has integrated a Component Marketplace for technology that can be incorporated into apps into its established Developer Garden API hub that offers developers access to network services.

“It’s not about a voice call, it’s about workflow automation, click to call, intelligent call handling,” Morsdorf explained.

Some of the components include software from partners including IBM, Intel, Oracle and another component store, Verious. “It was obvious we could never develop our own ecosystem and compete with others,” Morsdorf said.

White label technologies that developers can take advantage of have also been added to the Developer Garden. An example is an API for the Tropo localised communication cloud service that allows developers to add voice and SMS functionality to apps.

“We would like to see our developers taking out services, wrapping them up, and selling them in their app marketplace. We believe this approach has a lot of benefits,” Morsdorf said.

The Developer Garden and associated services are upgraded every six months, with the next raft of services due to be announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2013.