Sprint is getting into the mobile app store business.

This week Sprint Nextel unveiled plans to roll out its own mobile application storefront. Gone from future BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets will be the embedded app stores that accompany each phone’s respective operating system.

Although much is not yet known of Sprint’s forthcoming app store, which will formally launch in early 2010, Sprint took a subtle jab at Apple by saying it will offer a consistent approval process that will give a green light to apps submitted that “meet basic criteria,” which includes functionality and core controls.

“It’s kind of a big new day for us to relinquish that management,” said Sprint’s general manager of wireless consumer applications J.P. Brocket. “But ultimately, if you make good content and customers want it, you should have the right to get it out there and succeed… I don’t need 10 people behind a desk, behind a wall, looking at every piece of content and making the call whether it’s good or bad. Customers will make that choice.”