A little more than a week after Vodafone’s push into application business, Qualcomm follows suite by enhancing its Plaza solutions suite with the induction of an all new solution- Plaza Retail, a content retailing and distribution platform formed along the lines of other application stores launched by various telcos.

With this solution, mobile operators or any third-party content retailer can support application stores on any store and that too across an array of operating systems or network.

However, unlike the app stores of Apple or Research in Motion, Qualcomm''s Plaza doesn't support a single phone or category of phones, though. Instead it's designed to run over the lowliest of wireless browsers as well as the most high-end of operating systems, said Brian Vogelsang, director of product management for Qualcomm Internet Services.

Plaza Retail will allow publishers and developers have content available across multiple retailers instantly, no matter what development platform they use.

Also this means that content will no longer be directly laced to the device, thus allowing operators to offer subscribers the benefit of upgrading or changing handsets without losing their premium applications in the process.

Plaza Retail comprises of three elements, including Management Center, a content merchandizing system supporting Java, BREW, Flash and BlackBerry, with planned support for Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian and LiMo.

Plaza was first launched last year, with the aim to be a platform-agnostic method for delivering widgets/applications.