Taking Apple's lead, more and more telecom services providers and handset manufacturers are now looking to come out with their own application stores, and the latest to follow suit has been Orange, which has launched an "on-device application store", which will handle transaction by adding them to a user's phone bill, just like Ovi used to do about 18 months back.

The Orange App Store will, to begin with, provide 5,000 applications including games, ringtones, widgets, wallpapers, and much more, to its customers. Starting January, Orange handsets across UK and France will come preloaded with the store, but users who download the client for their older handsets will not be able to buy music from the Orange Jukebox for now.

While announcing the grand launch, Orange has promised that it will continuously work with developers and content providers to expand the application store with many, many more apps which will run on Java, Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.

Through the store, users will gain access to the interactive and interesting Orange TV, Orange Games and Orange Maps, among other features.

Over the next year, the carrier will continue to roll-out its store and new applications throughout Europe.