The concept of App Stores (application stores), which first became popular in the USA when Apple introduced the same for its iPhone, appears to be entering India in a big way with market leader Bharti Airtel now set to launch its App Stores on February 10, reports the Economic Times.

Recently Aircel had tied up with Infosys to launch its App Stores. Idea too is reportedly working towards launching App Stores.

Research firm Gartner estimates the global application store market to be worth $ 6.2 billion in 2010 with total downloads exceeding 4.5 billion. In 2009 revenues from app stores were at $ 4.2 billion and by 2013 the figure is expected to rise to $ 29.5 billion.

The concept of App Stores is mainly to gain an increased pie of the VAS market. Globally handset manufacturers have used this concept to gain additional revenues from VAS. Apart from Apple, Nokia, BlackBerry, Samsung and Sony Ericsson too have presence in the App Store space.