MobileBeat 2010 speaker update: Why Sprint says carriers shouldn’t run app stores

We’re delighted to announce two new speaker additions to the MobileBeat 2010 lineup — both of whom are at the forefront of changing app distribution as we know it.

Russ McGuire, vice president of strategy, Sprint — Sprint has rolled out a blazing fast fourth-generation mobile network, and yet Sprint has decided it doesn’t want to own the store where users get their apps: “We don’t see any value created by placing carriers as the gatekeepers between app developers and end users,” McGuire (pictured right) says. It’s the first time we’ve heard a major carrier representative ever say this. “At Sprint, we’re totally focused on enabling innovation that leverages our assets at Silicon Valley speed, and providing the tools to the developers who can make that happen.”

Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO, GetJar — GetJar is the world’s second most popular app store, so it may not be surprising that GetJar doesn’t want carriers to threaten that position. Besides, carriers seem to be doing fine by signing partnerships with GetJar. In the last 12 months, GetJar has signed up Sprint, Rogers, Reliance Communications, Virgin Mobile France and Carphone Warehouse among others. GetJar’s Application Catalog Express (ACE) service lets carriers offer more than 65,000 free apps to their users.

The panel: Building a successful mousetrap — McGuire and Laurs (pictured right, below) are just two of the speakers on a panel that will debate how the competition by the big platforms to attract developers has never been more intense, which players should be involved in running an app store, and how exactly those apps stores should be run. This hot topic, among many others, will be explored at our MobileBeat 2010 conference on July 12-13 in San Francisco.

A ton of other questions will be debated at MobileBeat: New devices, better networks and more efficient browsers are driving massive change in mobile, but who is most poise to profit from these changes? How will advertisers adapt, from the ad unit sizes they run in various screens, to strategies they implement to run across devices? How much will publishers customize their content to adjust to various devices, browsers and networks? How much control will folks like Verizon and Comcast have over those business models, and how are the big ad networks such as Google, Microsoft and now apparently Apple, going to respond? Will Hollywood retain power over entertainment as it goes mobile?

Click here for complete conference details.

Register here. Hurry though — tickets are going fast!

We also want to thank the mobile industry leaders that are supporting MobileBeat 2010, including GetJar, Placecast, Greystripe, and Qualcomm as Gold Sponsors, AdMob and OpenMarket as Silver Sponsors, and Nexage, Offerpal, and Marvell as Event Sponsors. There are many sponsorship opportunities still available. Please contact sponsors@venturebeat.com for more information.