Can you hear me now? Urban Airship partners with Verizon Wireless to provide push notification services for developers

[HTML1]I know I’m overstating the obvious when I say that, in the mobile market, things are a wee bit fragmented. You’ve got the platforms—like iOS, Android, and MeeGo, you’ve got providers—like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, you’ve got handset manufacturers—like HTC, Motorola, and RIM… the list goes on and on. And amidst this swirl sits a bevy of developers, just trying to build cool stuff for mobile. And the the tool makers trying to help those developers. If only there could be some crossover. To simplify things.

Well, now there is. Thanks to a new partnership between Portland’s Urban Airship and wireless provider Verizon where Verizon will promote Urban Airship push notifications services and AirDrop to the Verizon Developer Community.

The partnership was announced today at the Verizon Developer Community Conference.

But what does it mean, really? It means that Urban Airship has become the de facto standard for push notifications for developers on the Verizon network. That’s right. For every smart phone that has push notification capabilities, developers will be encouraged to use Urban Airship.

That’s a pretty big deal. And a pretty big network. With 92 million customers.

Now granted, they’re not all smart phone users. But even if a sliver of them are. And app developers for those users choose Urban Airship as they’re push notification provider? That’s a big bump in the number of messages Urban Airship is pushing out.

Which is a rather timely segue to also mention that Urban Airship has changed their pricing. Giving developers more push for their proverbial buck.

We’re happy to announce a major update to our pricing plans for AirMail Push. Our new pricing model now lets you send up to 1 million push notifications for free! Effective October 1, 2010, you can send up to 1 million push notifications, per month, at no cost.

That’s right. One meeeellion push notifications per month. For free. Looks like that will give those Verizon developers something into which they can sink their teeth. Or tooths. Or whatever.

For more on the partnership, see the Urban Airship Verizon announcement. For more on the new Urban Airship pricing, see the Urban Airship post. Or you can read more about the Verizon Developer Community in the Verizon release. And I’d highly recommend Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s piece on the Verizon focus on developers.

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy