The company says the service will soon be available via 3G from more than one million handsets’ homescreens in the UK and France—from January selected phones will come with the store pre-loaded and more countries across Europe will be getting localised stores. Orange says the system works with Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems.

Initially the store will have a not-too-impressive 5,000 free and paid-for apps, games, ringtones and wallpapers to choose from (Apple has 100,000 and counting) although it says “thousands” more will be added net year. As with other app services, the cost of paid downloads are added to customers’ bills.

Orange has an app developer programme and is stepping up efforts to get app developers on board—but there’s no clue to the financial offer or the benefits of them being involved with Orange opposed to other platforms. We asked Orange to clarify but a spokesman says the company “can’t talk specifics about revenue share at this stage”.

Isn’t Orange a bit late to this app party? In the ultra-competitive world of mobile, Apple has, to great success, used its apps as marketing juice to drive sales: there are better phones out there than the iPhone with better hardware facilities and processing power, but no other app store has the must-have content and services of the Apple app store. Orange sells the iPhone in France, the UK and elsewhere in Europe—but today’s announcement is boosting its media presence on other handsets.

Orange surely has no chance of winning market share on the strength of its apps alone. But as part of the suite of multimedia services it offers customers, including music downloads and Orange TV, this could be one of several ways to draw in new customers.