T-Mobile does the talk: Third party applications will be able to get on its app store “in days”

“Historically, we, as carriers, have been been very difficult with doing business with,” says Venetia Espinoza, T-Mobile’s Director of Mobile Applications and Partner Programs, today at GigaOm’s mobile conference, Mobilize.

She disclosed details for a new “flip-through agreement” for third party applications in the new app store — which is how she hopes to speed up the application approval process. “What used to be months, we are hoping to become days,” she says.

The new agreement is only a part of the carrier’s new partner development community program, which intends to open up devices using its “app store” to third party applications. The app store, as we’ve discussed, will span a number of software platforms including Windows Mobile, Symbian, and eventually Android.

At the panel, entitled “The Carrier Panel, Strategies To Keep Mobile Data Growing,” she explained the agreement in more detail.

“We’ll also be implementing what we call a “flip-through agreement” where if you agree to the terms of that particular agreement, then you can click ‘yes’ and have a business deal with T-Mobile”, she said. This contrasts with how operator agreements with applications have worked up until this point.

Here are more takeaways from her statements, where she talks about the T-Mobile-Google relationship:

We are investing heavily in our relation with Google. I’m also pleased to announce the Beta version of our partner development community program. Our community program is intending to embrace and get rid of some of the hurdles related to bringing applications to market. You heard some statements from Google earlier (meaning Rich Miner’s talk) that are dead on in saying where the problems are. Historically, we, as carriers, have been been very difficult with doing business with.

First of all, you’ve got to figure out whom and where you need to talk to. It takes months to find the right person. Then it takes months to negotiate an agreement.

With the partner development community program we hope to solve the problem.

What we hope to be doing is: What we are doing is we hope to be very transparent about what it takes to do business with T-Mobile.

We’ll be publishing and open great parts so that publishers and partners can see what the economic terms are. So: no more guessing about “what kind of percentage am I gonna get,” or “what’s the deal gonna look like” and we’ll also be implementing what we call a “flip-through agreement” where if you agree to that terms of that particular agreement, then you can click “yes” and you have a business deal with T-Mobile.

Of course, we will have our traditional channels because not every type of application will fit into that program. But the goal is to create an online, transparent easy-to-do-business-with path to engage with us.