It will be interesting to see the evolution of the app stores. As new devices and platforms come on, they will initially cause excitement but then you will see that the apps are just copies of ones that already exist on the one you had before. More excitement seems to come from when will app x appear on my new device. The new phones and pads have to have Facebook, Twitter, and farmville(angry birds, PAC-man and doodle jump) in addition to a useable media player and picture viewer to launch. After that, the “must have” apps drop rapidly in popularity. When I look at peoples pcs, I see office, a virus scanner, and maybe a few games. Creative types have some more apps, but the world of large market applications is much smaller than it was 10 years ago.
That said, I have met a few people who make a nice living for themselves selling applications. They would not move the register for Adobe, Microsoft, or Autodesk, but it works for this new breed of developers. Tools are such that a good programmer can write something fun and cheap and people will buy it. Apples iTunes App store has proven this and it will interesting to see if they can move it from their idevices to their computer platform. Google and Microsoft will be also be doing this, but they will likely end up with only the most popular applications from the iOs platform. It will be harder to market quality than quantity.
This new paradigm of cheap but good software will be fun to watch develop. The tools are getting better, but it’s nothing different from the Windows 95 days when Windows walloped the Mac and and any other platform. Microsoft made great tools and the developers responded. Now the platform tables are turned and development tools are much more varied as are the delivery methods. Smart people can get around bad tools, but the widest delivery platform is where folks will go first.
Microsoft and Rim have large strongholds and trust in enterprise software, but their tools and devices are such laggards, that they could lose a lot of steam in those areas. Like the military, cheap consumer systems like cell phones have replaced complex and expensive battlefield communications systems. The corporate world is seeing an influx of cheap devices that are easy to program and that obviates some of the need for custom devices like Symbol Technologies. Since Blackberry and Microsoft are late to the party, but not too late, they still have a chance to retain that world.
I don’t think people need that many apps anymore either. I tend to buy some and download more free ones, but I have stopped doing that much anymore. It is a pain to manage them with the endless updates, I don’t pay for them as much after a while either, unless its a targeted app for my astronomy habit. Something compelling shows up regularly, like Pulse or Flipboard, and that keeps me looking. Overall though, the web is what I go back to. Any new device will not be expensive to move to since apps are very cheap to produce now. You go through a culling process as you move, which makes things lean for awhile, then you start to load up again.
As the hardware platforms differentiate, that could change things some. But fragmentation is already rearing it’s ugly head on Android. Carmack has pointed that out and the Angry birds guys are in the same boat. Since people are writing pixel specific apps, that will be an issue. It is a different problem with 3d games since the horsepower may vary as much as the screens do. Text based apps don’t need that horsepower currently. Designing interfaces for all of these different devices is hard work, and it will result in a winning platform (more likely screen size). Apps will need to be sold to support development across these platforms. Why not a subscription model to all new versions of the app on all platforms? Then I might buy EA games since I know I can carry them with me. Flash was supposed to do that, but everything is too screen size specific.
Cheap apps will make the world more platform fluid much like the web has done. As long as the app that supports my web is there, I can move. Look and feel is likely to be the same which will diminish platform advantages. Gaming hardware is nice aspirational purchase stuff, but battery life and connectivity is king here.
I just want things to work.
Tags: app store, apps, blackberry, google marketplace, google tv, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, rim
