Mobile: Still waiting to see what sticks
Together we can figure this out
Despite Apple's tremendous success with the iPhone, we're still in the early innings of mobile adoption. As such, a strategy of "throwing-lots-of-things-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks" makes a lot of sense.
It's true of platforms like Google Android, but it's also true of applications.
Even on the iPhone, which reportedly drives $2.4 billion worth of applications in annual sales, very few application developers appear to be making much money. Zynga, creator of Farmville, is an exception, as BusinessWeek notes, doing more than $100 million in annual sales.
This isn't to suggest that developers should stop trying. Quite the opposite. Now is the time to try a range of applications to see what sells.
Google is following the same strategy with its Android platform. The company is happily promiscuous with its code, allowing and even encouraging fragmentation to see where the industry will take Android. Fragmentation enables handset manufacturers and others to find the best fit for Android in the market, rather than going the Apple route. ("If we build it, they will come.")
It's very possible, as Bill Weinberg notes, that such fragmentation and experimentation will result in Android getting greater play beyond mobile than it does in the smartphone market.
I suspect Google won't mind. As in other areas, it's using the broad-based, open-source approach to increase adoption of its services like Search, services which generate more than $22 billion each year.
It's an approach that works particularly well for a fast-follower: someone tracking the progress of an early market leader. An open-source strategy basically enables the industry to determine, by itself and for itself, what the market leader is missing and how to resolve the voids.
However, it's also a good way to generate developer interest and, hence, modifications and add-ons. Application developers might be well-served by open-sourcing their applications to encourage adoption and make their road maps a community affair.
There are over 4 billion mobile phones on the planet, with virtually no one outside of the wireless carriers and handset manufacturers making money from this extensive device reach. The market is ripe for software businesses, but first we need to experiment to discover what sells. Open source just might be able to help with that.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Games generate much of the App Store revenue. Perhaps we need more open source gaming on smartphones?
Like the article said, "...a strategy of "throwing-lots-of-things-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks" makes a lot of sense." I take that to include anything. I believe there is always room for improvement. And who knows, it might even stick better.
Sure, a few things might stick better, but the carnage is going to weed out a lot of weaker players, or even stronger ones that overshoot their capabilities.
So if you really like aphorisms and/or want another bubble, go nuts.
I was just hoping that we learned something from the first Internet bubble.
Zynga make a ton of games, and has their fingers deep into games on MySpace and Facebook, so it makes sense for them to expand into mobile phones - in their case, they're not trying to see what sticks - they're just expanding what they already have.
IMHO, it's the mobile manufacturers and carriers who are throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, which is why most of them get labeled as iPhone killers, yet utterly fail to do that.
Also, the iPhone is helped considerably by the iPod touch (whose users download considerably more apps than iPhone users). If there are 40 million iPhones, there are probably 25 million iPod touches.
Apple benefits from a tightly controlled ecosystem and having the foresight/luck in owning a big box media store. Just tossing an open source operating system on a touchscreen smartphone is not enough.
People say 100,000 apps are a lot. But I don't think it even begins to cover everything we need. First of all, I estimate that only 25% of all apps in a category is worth using. So if people think 100,000 apps are really good than I think there should really be 400,000 apps. And I think people who say that there are only a few good quality apps would agree with me.
But let's take educational software, where each school district controls themselves. Educational software failed in the past because it tried to be a one-size-fits-all. The future of educational software has to be created locally by each school district and maybe each class. Imagine each student with an Android device, and if each class had their own version of an app, how many apps there would be in an Android Market. There would be millions of apps. If you included other areas if interests like sports, professional occupations, etc; there would be billions of apps.
The Apple App Store has just as far to go than any other app store.
It's a bright future for apps and smartphones and mobile devices. Let the users win.
Most classroom try to banish cell phones in a classroom :)
My favorite part in this post
It is the iPhone that is sticking. Nothing else is even close and the only thing preventing Apple from taking over the whole market is the 'Emperor with no clothes' Verizon with their supposed wonderful network that does not allow simultaneous Voice and Data.
- by davidmcelroy_dotmac November 8, 2009 3:36 PM PST
- From a technical point of view, what Google is doing with Android makes sense. From a BRANDING perspective, it makes no sense. Ask a hundred random people on the street and you'll find that a very, very few of them know what Android means. They generally don't even understand what it meant by an operating system. To them, it's simply a phone that happens to work in a particular way. To them, a phone with different hardware AND a different user interface is a totally different phone. They don't care about the underlying OS. They don't even understand what that does. You can't build a brand when people don't understand it. If Good had insisted that every Android phone looked and acted in certain ways, yes, that MIGHT have helped them to create another situation where one OS became known (and asked for) from a range of manufacturers. But since you can look at two different Android phone and not understand that they're both Android phones, a HUGE percentage of people will NEVER see them as the same. For all intents and purposes, those are two entirely different phone with little or no relationship between them. Verizon and Motorola might build a Droid brand. HTC might build Hero brand. (Both are just "for instance.") But that doesn't mean anybody outside geek circles sees them as a part of the Android brand.
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- by yeshuawatso November 8, 2009 10:02 PM PST
- I don't think Android is out to be the brand of the century, but I also don't think this is the idea. Apple has done something amazing with the cell phone market just as they did with personal computers in the 80's; however, they still lost that race to IBM-type PCs and Windows, and hasn't been able to catch up since.
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- by odubtaig November 8, 2009 11:30 PM PST
- Yeshuawatso's right. Android is bringing to mobile phones software that has the same purpose that software once had for business hardware in the 1970s; the software is there to sell the hardware. If smartphone manufacturers sell phones based on Android with all the channels going towards Google (search, appstore, etc) then Google don't need to sell the Android brand to the consumer, they just need to seel it to the phone companies. If consumers are using the O/S in the way Google wants and this points them towards Google's stores and services they most probably don't care if consumers know their Android from their elbow.
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(15 Comments)Android is great for phone makers, because they don't have to write an OS or pay Microsoft for one. It's also good for Google because it puts smart phones (and the searches they're going to do) into the hands of more people. But there's nothing about Android that means it's some army marching to overtake the iPhone. To do that, you need a successful brand -- and Android will never become that.
If you take Android into context for mobile phones just as we take Windows into context for PCs, then we can see how building an OS for a variety of devices (including PCs) will position Apple for a decline of the market. Yes, they'll always have a little slice, but their exclusivity, monopoly, and death-grip control will be their fate.
More and more manufactures are flopping to Android for good reason; Apple didn't invent the cell phone (although you could argue that they re-invented it) and there were already more players in the cellular market that aren't going to roll over and die (with the exception of Palm). If these manufacturers can slim cost of producing a phone by using a "universal" OS, then they can focus on lowering hardware cost (econ of scale) and specific software add-ons (in attempt to differentiate products). Since there are so many manufactures in the market, the price of these advance devices will decline to almost nothing; in the same way PC prices have declined to almost nothing.
Like Mac apps, Apple also faces a familiar problem with iPhone apps--they only work on iPhones and like devices. This can be a blessing or a burden depending on who consumes market share the fastest. Seeing that Android will have more devices worldwide than iPhone/iPods in the coming years, all the apps purchased from the Android Market should theoretically work on other Android devices. This means that you can move your data to a new device without the worry of wasting money due to incompatibilities. This is what keeps Windows in the PC market. If all of Windows applications (and familiarity) could be transported to the mac with ease, then Macs and Linux PCs would rule at worst, or Windows would be a lot cheaper at best.
You are correct about manufacturers creating their own brands with Android at the core, but you're mistaken to think that brand is the main driver for new purchases. Brand recognition keeps people buying your products, it doesn't do anything for people who have never purchased your product. Apple's iPhone brand doesn't make me want to purchase an iPhone any more than Cisco's brand makes the average consumer want to buy an expensive piece of networking equipment. Consumers react to price and utility for determining new product purchases. They think of the brand when they go to buy again or recommend a friend.