At the end of September, Vodafone announced 360, “A Suite of Innovative, New Internet Services for Mobile and PC”:

• An address book that integrates with social networks.
• A collection of applications, games, music and maps for mobile phones, PC and Mac.
• A phone backup service for contacts and other phone content.
• An app store with around 1,000 applications.

For us the most interesting part of course is the app store. There are however very little details enclosed. This is all Vodafone has announced so far:

a catalogue of over one thousand Apps at launch available to different handsets, downloadable through the Vodafone Shop

We are very curious what kind of platforms the store will support. Most likely there will be a strong focus on mobile widgets.

Several sources have confirmed that Vodafone 360 will be launching to consumers tomorrow. The 360 website changed from promotional material to the image below, indicating that the launch is getting close:

Vodafone 360 website

360 will launch in Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK and will be followed by launches in a number of other countries in 2010, including India, Turkey, South Africa, New Zealand, Romania and France.

More info tomorrow.

UPDATE: Vodafone 360 was launched.
The Vodafone 360 website has been displaying both the new service but also ‘work in progress’ image over the last hours. It seems Vodafone is in the process of going live, but not fully accessible yet.

Yesterday, Vodafone announced its new suite of internet services called 360. Part of 360 is an app store. Not too many details are announced on the supported content and platforms, but it’s clear that mobile widgets will be in the store.

Vodafone just announced a competition, called App Star, for developers to build the best mobile widget for Vodafone 360:

The mobile widgets to enter this competition need to be based on the JIL platform and support the two upcoming 360 phones by Samsung. These Samsung phones are not running Symbian, Android or Windows Mobile, but the Linux based LiMo operating system.

The Vodafone App Star competition has a combined prize fund of €1,000,000 which will be shared across eight of Vodafone’s largest European operating companies to encourage innovation in the mobile application and widget space. The eight participating countries are: Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Interested developers can sign up here.