Posts Tagged ‘app store’

Another App Store?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

According to a press release yesterday, Microsoft has finally driven a stake in the ground and will be delivering new phones with Windows Mobile 6.5, as well as the Windows Mobilewinmo-65Marketplace on October 6th.  Windows Mobile 6.5 is the newest version of the Windows operating systems for smartphones and related devices that has been promised since very early this year.

If you take a look at what Microsoft is doing with this launch, it is pretty aggressive.  In North America alone, it will be released on the 3 largest carriers in the US, along with about half a dozen device manufacturers.  Pretty impressive, and definitely a non-trivial undertaking.  But probably the most interesting thing coming in the announcement is the launch of the new Windows Mobile Marketplace.

It’s hard to realize that with almost 65,000 titles online today, Apple just launched the App Store a year ago July.  That’s right.  It’s only been a year, and now all new devices are being judged as to whether or not they have a good app store.  One of the few criticisms I continually read about the Palm Pre is that there are very few applications for it.  I say that not to throw rocks at Palm, but to illustrate how much the market now demands applications for smart phones.

What makes Windows Mobile Marketplace so interesting is that Microsoft has a ready made set of applications for Windows Mobile devices already.  Estimates put the number of Windows Mobile applications at about 20,000.  More interesting is the fact many of these applications run on more rugged devices from Intermec and Symbol.  By definition many of the applications are business oriented vs. consumer oriented.  The App Store is extremely consumer oriented.  It will be interesting to see how Microsoft’s entry into the environment changes things.  I think they may have enough critical mass to swing the pendulum at least somewhat toward business applications.

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Apple App Store Hits 1 Billion Downloads!

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

iphone-app-storeThat’s right, about 20 minutes ago Apple’s App Store crossed an amazing threshold.  They have now had over 1 billion applications downloaded in their first nine months of existence.  This is a phenomenal feat for any company, even one with the marketing prowess of Apple.  While mobile applications have been in existence for well over a decade, nobody else has generated the interest in applications that Apple and the iPhone have.

If you want a little more information on them reaching the 1 billion mark, check out this web site.  There are links on that page for the top 20 paid apps, and the top 20 free apps of all time.  Some of the ones that made the list are almost as amazing as the record itself.  Hang on tight now.  This whole “application thing” is just getting started.  Congratulations, Apple!

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Blackberry: Rockin’ the Smartphone Market

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Blackberry SmartphoneThe Smartphone market is one of the areas we closely watch as it serves as a bellweather for trends on how businesses are adopting mobility.  Within this market is Nokia, RIM/Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, HTC, Palm and others.  What makes these devices ’smart’ as compared to a cell phone?  In simple terms they have an operating system that allows applications to be downloaded, a wireless data connection and usually a keyboard that accomodates a lot of typing.

A leading research firm, Gartner, just released its annual report on this market.  Of the 138 million devices sold in 2008, Nokia owns 40% of the market, followed by Blackberry (~20%) and then iPhone (~10%).  Nokia is losing market share, Blackberry is up 84% (quarter over quarter) and iPhone, a new entrant, is up 111%.   What is interesting here is that Blackberry is now a $12Billion company and this growth rate is incredible for a company that size.  Blackberry’s niche is serving the business customer, which are typically email fanatics.  iPhone serves a completely different segment, entertainment driven customers.

My take on this development is that businesses can cost justify a Blackberry as a business tool.  With a new application store called App World, we will likely see this trend continue.

If you would like more detailed information on the subject, Michael Mace’s blog has some very good statitistics and observations.

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Carrier Based App Store

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Telstra, an Australian carrier, recently announced their intent to launch the app store concept for their subscriber base.  Russ McGuire provided a link to an article over at GigaOM on this topic.  The article is worth a quick read, but I think the comments are even more interesting.  Basically the comments reflect people mulling over what is really different in this announcement than what happens already.

In today’s world most, if not all, carriers have a web store that allows their users to download content.  This includes ring tones, wallpaper, music, video, and applications (generally games).  A user purchases the content through the carrier storefront, and they are billed for that content by the carrier.  I too am not sure what is really different here.  It seems to me Telstra is simply trying to capitalize on the buzz surrounding app stores right now.  There certainly isn’t anything wrong with this, but I don’t see it as a game changer in any way.

What we are witnessing right now is a huge rush for many companies to take advantage of Apple’s success with their App Store.  Basically all of the device manufacturers are jumping in.  In the case of Android and Microsoft, the organizations responsible for the operating systems are jumping in as well.  This is good in that folks will now be able to find applications for their devices.  This will help the shift to devices becoming more than just phones.

I expect we will see more carriers ride the wave in the near term.  I would if I were them.  However, consolidation will come. It has too.  I’d be curious what others think about this.

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Applications Everywhere

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Over lunch today I read a story on the winners and losers at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  In this story, Sue Marek of FierceWireless took time to reflect on what she and other editorial team members saw at the show.  The article discusses the winners and losers in five areas:

  1. US Operators
  2. Handsets
  3. Infrastructure Vendors
  4. App Stores
  5. Operating Systems

What I find interesting about the list is not so much who the winners and losers are perceived to be, but the fact that App Stores made the list as a category.  I haven’t taken to time to look back and see if they did a similar story last year, but if they did they could not have even had App Stores on the list.  Do you know why?  None of them existed.  In less than a year, the iPhone App Store has emerged from non-existence to offer 15,000 applications which have collectively been downloaded over 500 million times.  The Android Market has much fewer applications, but millions of downloads already.

Applications are becoming a key part of what people are looking for on their mobile devices.  We are just at the beginning of this wave in mobility.  It will be interesting to see who the winners and losers in mobile applications are next year.

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The Pendulum of Business and Consumer Applications

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Those who have been in the mobile applications business since the PDA days have experienced the innovation and buying cycles many times.  When we were at Palm’s first developers conference in 1997, a majority of the attendees were developing the next biggest game beyond backgammon.  Individual or consumer based applications were a big hit until wireless data networks started working on PDAs.  The industry forgot about games and rushed to the new frontier, business applications.  The color screen was then announced, and a new wave of games and consumer apps flooded the market.  Then the ability to synchronize email shifted industry focus back to the high ARPU promises of the small and medium sized businesses and the Fortune 1000. 

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of ring tones, games, and personal applications in the market and it seems the industry has forgotten the business customer once again.  The demands of the commercial market in each of these cycles is always lagging as the business customer has higher standards (security, version control etc.) and demands some ROI for the investment.  With 100’s of millions of new Smartphone owners, the pendulum will be swinging back to the interests of the business user, and maybe sooner than we think.   ABI Research just announced that 16.5% of surveyed Smartphone users spent between $100 and $499 on applications.

That seems like an awful lot of ring tones and $1 games from the app store.  Something else is going on.  Stay tuned.

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Crossing Over…

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

mobileworldcongressI just read an article in my inbox from Fierce Developer.  The article was discussing what is hot at Mobile World Congress, which is going on this week in Barcelona.  So what is the big topic of conversation there?  Not surprisingly it’s app stores.  Just look at the landscape today.  We have the iPhone App Store and Android Market already.  Add to that announcments from RIM (BlackBerry), Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and LG, and you can see how quickly the whole concept is proliferating.

At the core, both economics and a desire to control the user experience with the mobile devices are driving the handset makers to offer these stores.  What I think is more interesting though is that we are at a tipping point with mobile devices.  Our mobile phones are starting to cross over from “just phones” to devices that are more PC-like.  The whole concept of the app store is facilitating that change.  The stores offer more than just ring tones.  Granted, much of what they offer today is along the lines of games, or other types of applications to keep us entertained waiting on a flight, or waiting on our friends to pick us up.  But more is coming, including more business applications.

The app stores open up a market for developers much, much larger than they could access with their own resources.  This helps drive creativity, because there is actually a place to display your wares once you have taken the time to develop them.  The more applications that are available, the more useful our phones can be, and the more like computers they become.  The more capable the phones become, the more application developers can do with them.  It’s a circle that feeds on itself.  I don’t think mobile phones have completely crossed over yet, but I do think we are witnessing that cross over occur before our eyes.

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Online App Stores are Booming – What it means to Business

Monday, January 26th, 2009

For those of us that eat and sleep mobile (that’s our job, right?), it’s been interesting to follow how the big industry players are rushing to create online mobile application “stores”. Riding on the coattails of the successful iPhone App Store, Microsoft, Google, RIM and others are all jumping into the ring to compete head-to-head with Apple.

These industry behemoths are launching their online stores so end users/customers can find, buy and download applications and other content for their mobile devices. Plus, it provides a marketing outlet for the growing developer community to showcase and sell their wares. That’s great news for our industry as it shows strong interest and continued growth in mobility. Loosening carrier restrictions and opening platforms means just about anyone can develop, upload and sell a mobile solution to this growing market. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention you know that you’re not likely to find many strategic business applications on these sites.

iBeer ApplicationIt’s one thing to hack out some code utilizing the iPhone’s accelerometer to mimic a pint of beer and upload it to the App Store, but developing and successfully marketing a strategic business application (one that provides clear value and a quick return on investment) requires a different kind of business model. For many small and medium sized developers a great product is enough to build a list of local clients. But extending their product’s reach to the regional or national stage can be overwhelming due to prohibitive marketing and advertising costs, product support and training issues, sales channel complexities, mounting fees, distribution issues and more. Unfortunately, these big online stores don’t help with those issues because they simply aren’t designed to offer any more than just the application.

Since many business application developers struggle to effectively market their apps, potential customers have difficulty finding their products. The major search engines are too broad to be effective and most online sites are consumer-focused or too narrow. So where does Joe the Electrician (just couldn’t bring myself to say ‘plumber’!) go to find a bundled solution for inventory management, vehicle tracking and m-commerce for his business? Well, it’s not the iTunes App Store. Microsoft’s upcoming “Skymarket” store has potential, but only if the software is written for Windows Mobile  (it was going to be for version but maybe now for version 6.5 - which isn’t even out yet??). What about RIM’s new BlackBerry store (once it opens, of course)? Possibly, but Joe may need something more rugged than a shiny new BlackBerry Storm.

It’s obvious that this book is still being written - in fact, I think we’re only looking at chapter 1. And of course, as the next chapters come together, you’ll read about it here.

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