Back in early 2010, Verizon attempted to cash in on the app craze by launching its very own storefront for Android and BlackBerry users known as Verizon Apps. In the intervening years, the Android Market (now known as the Google Play Store) has grown to rival Apple's App Store in size — and Verizon has finally decided that maintaining its own alternative just isn't worth the trouble anymore. The carrier just announced a series of steps designed to shutter the service, with notifications to customers coming this month. By January, the Verizon Apps storefront will be removed from devices via a software update, and the carrier will start pulling apps from the storefront throughout the month.

Specifically, apps that require a monthly licence check will be removed soon so that consumers don't purchase them and find them useless a few months later. As Verizon doesn't specifically spell out the fate of apps that don't use that monthly license check, we're expecting they'll continue to work like normal. Of course, Verizon also points out that "most apps existing on Verizon Apps are already available on multiple app storefronts, such as Google Play, Amazon and BlackBerry App World," so we're not expecting users to have much trouble finding replacements for apps that stop working.