Today, at Verizon’s developer applications conference in San Jose, Calif., the company said it is tweaking its agreement with Qualcomm to allow for new features on Brew phones, like a recommendation engine that will help users find favorite apps. It is also adjusting the financial arrangement with developers to allow developers to distribute free apps through the storefront without being charged a bundled to do so.

By adding free applications, conceivably users will be encouraged to browse the store more often, increasing overall downloads to the platform. Ryan Hughes, Verizon’s VP of business development, told mocoNews today that “We struck an agreement in which Verizon and Qualcomm removed all the fees from developer to Qualcomm. Hypothetically, if a company like Facebook, which is not interested in charging for an app, will now be able to build a Brew app and not have it cost them money.” Before, users would potentially have to pay pennies per month for each user. Hughes: “It was a reverse incentive. The more successful the more it cost.”

Hughes said he thinks on the whole developers will still find smartphones more compelling for many of the free apps in existence today, but “we would certainly hope that there would be thousands of innovative apps added to the platform—that’s the intent of restructuring with the agreement.”

As for Verizon’s own V CAST Apps catalog, a spokesperson said they weren’t ready to name the vendors that are being used in the process, but that for the most part they are building the storefront on their own. Hughes confirmed that they are not partnering with Qualcomm’s Plaza Retail. “We are basically running the ecosystem on our own. We aren’t at odds with Plaza, but we are building it and managing it on our own. For Brew, they will continue to be there. Their work is very much of a Brew ecosystem.”

Without partners doing a ton of heavy lifting, Verizon will have to hire testers, legal staff and other employees to help keep their promise of approving apps with a 14-day window of being submitted. Hughes said to do so, they are starting to put together a smartphone team that resembles Qualcomm’s Brew division. “There will be a whole bunch of people signing off on it,” he said. Many of the employees are in place today, he said, but they will continue to ramp up as they get closer to the fourth-quarter launch. Is it a commitment of hundreds of employees? Hughes wouldn’t say, but he’s keeping his fingers crossed for at least 100.