One App Store to rule them all?
(Credit: Apple)Apple has an app store, of course. So does Microsoft. Google has two, one for Android and now one for Wave. In fact, it's hard to find anyone who doesn't have an app store these days.
We're swimming in app stores. Or drowning.
I'm serious. At the Symbian conference in London on Tuesday, I attended a panel that was overrun with app stores. Nokia, Symbian, GetJar, Sony Ericsson, Handmark, and Handango were all promoting their respective app stores, each talking about how great theirs is.
They're probably right. They probably are all great. But how am I, as a lay consumer, going to figure out which one to use?
More particularly, how will developers decide which platforms to target?
After all, everyone wants to be a platform these days. Does that mean that no one is?
Developers may be spoiled for choice, but "choice" in this case may not be what they want. Developers need to feed their families and will follow the money. Money is more easily made when choice is manageable (which is a euphemism for "limited").
This means we'll see plenty of application developers remain with Apple (though it's debatable whether the iPhone is the land of milk and honey for anyone but Apple), but we'll also continue to see a stampede to Google Android.
At present, every other mobile platform is playing for third place, but this could change: Symbian, as a foundation, is in a good position to launch an effective challenge to both Apple and Google if it can get its marketing and execution right.
Outside of mobile, it's unclear what role app stores will play. It's nice that Google Wave is getting an app store, but it's just one more "forge" among many. Every vendor (my employer, included) seems to feel an irresistible urge to create a forge/app store where third-party developers can "add value" to their "platforms."
Do we really need these? Or do we need more general repositories like Google Code and SourceForge?
I wish I had a definitive answer. I'm just not sure that these competing app stores do anything more than appeal to vendor vanity, and they could end up causing customer confusion.
As a consumer, I don't want to have to think about sorting among competing app stores. I just want applications.
Presumably, if I use a Sony Ericsson phone, I'll automatically find myself within its app store (unless my wireless provider doesn't slot me into its app store first, that is). But if that's the case, what's the point of making a big deal over a glorified catalog of applications that work with my given device/software/etc.?
It strikes me that app stores, like the cloud, are simply a way to dress up old ideas. If they help to organize potential buyers and sellers of software, great. But I still think I'd prefer meta-repositories of applications, similar to SourceForge, than individual application repositories for every single device or piece of software that I happen to buy.
How about you?
I had dinner Monday night in London with David Wood, futurist at Symbian, and came away feeling strangely calm. Perhaps it was the exceptional food at Veeraswamy, capped off by a bitter chocolate ice cream....
Or perhaps it was the fact that Wood has spent 21 years with Symbian (and Psion before it was acquired by Nokia), long enough to live through several mobile revolutions and not get too ruffled by any particular one.
In fact, over the course of our dinner Wood pulled out his back-to-the-future Psion Series 5mx on several occasions, a device released a decade ago yet eerily resembles the cutting-edge Netbooks and smartphones of today.
Plus ça change...
Symbian has proved to be such a formidable competitor in Europe and the Middle East, but has underwhelmed in North America and Japan, though it claims roughly 50 percent of the global handheld market. In part it stemmed from the fact that Symbian had limited target GSM wireless carriers in the U.S. (AT&T and T-Mobile). Without a CDMA offering, Symbian was locked out of much of the U.S. market.
But in June 2008, Nokia announced that Symbian would be open sourced to broaden its appeal to developers. The catch? The process would take up to two years to complete. Today, Symbian still isn't open source but is actively working toward that goal.
Unfortunately, Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's BlackBerry, and even the Palm Pre have been claiming ever-widening swaths of the global smartphone market, taking share in Symbian's European backyard. Wood isn't overly concerned. He may have good reason.
While we like to think of technology moving at incredible speed, the fact is that adoption moves much more slowly. Even in a market as dynamic as browsers, Mozilla's Asa Dotzler calls out the snail-pace shifts in browser adoption trends.
To prove his point, Wood points out how Apple's iPhone was considered near divine until the Palm Pre came out, and then suddenly criticism was heaped on the iPhone for lacking basic functionality. No multitasking? No cut-and-paste? Come on, Apple!
And so Apple has, as its soon-to-be-released iPhone 3G S shows. But the Pre's launch suggests that Apple doesn't have a stranglehold on mobile mind share. If Symbian does things right and provides compelling value as an application publisher, it should have ample time to mount a serious challenge to existing smartphone competitors.
Symbian doesn't plan to launch an App Store, Apple-style. Instead, as CNET has reported, the foundation wants to serve the same role a book publisher does: provide intermediary services between application developers and the wireless carriers. Such a strategy not only gives Symbian more devices to play on, but it also makes it a valuable partner to more wireless carriers than Apple can.
It's not a given that Symbian will succeed, of course, but Wood could be right to remain calm in advance of Symbian's launch of its open-source project. The world is not standing still, waiting for Symbian's arrival. On the other hand, it's also not moving forward nearly as fast as we might think.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
I've written recently about the stampede of companies desperate to replicate Apple's success with its iPhone-focused App Store ("Apple App Store clone wars reach fever pitch"), but it appears the stampede is not yet complete. Novell, according to an article in PC Pro and further covered by my colleague Dave Rosenberg, is considering launching its own App Store for open-source applications.
There's just one hitch: we already have one.
In fact, we have several. Google Code, SourceForge, Code Haus, and other open-source code repositories already freely provide open-source applications. Beyond this, Red Hat tried to do a one-click installation experience with Red Hat Exchange (RHX) back in 2007. It didn't work as planned.
Holger Dyroff, vice president of business development at Novell, thinks cost will separate its open-source application store from the crowd, as he told PC Pro:
On the user end, all they'll see is an open-source applications store with one-click downloads of new software. Unlike the other stores though, they won't have to pay for any of those applications, which will be very attractive.
But this almost seems counterproductive for Novell. For years open-source companies have had to combat the idea that "open source" is synonymous with "free." I doubt Novell's investors will be happy if the market reacts in the way Dyroff expects and comes to believe open source can be had for free.
The only thing an open-source application store could do, over and above the various code repositories already serving up applications, is make the installation experience seamless, but this will never be feasible with enterprise applications, which always require a certain amount of customization and fine-tuning, whether proprietary or open source.
In sum, this appears to be an attempt by Novell to join the Apple App Store herd, minus the Apple App Store brand and momentum. Novell has been growing its Linux business consistently each quarter, but an open-source applications store is unlikely to move the needle further. While I'd love to see it succeed, I'm not going to hold my breath.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
The big news coming out of Sun's JavaOne conference this week is that Sun (soon-to-be Oracle) is trying to outbid Microsoft as the world's biggest photocopier company. ("Redmond, start your photocopiers.")
No, Sun isn't actually building photocopiers but, like Symbian, Microsoft, and others, it is playing catch-up to Apple's App Store with its new Java Store, as The Register reports. The store is intended to be a central repository for Java and JavaFX applications, but it's unclear how it will distinguish itself.
As a consumer, I don't care if an application is built in Java. I just want to know whether it's any good, and whether it will run on my iPhone (Blackberry/Palm Pre/whatever). The Java brand matters to developers--it doesn't matter at all to end users.
Not to be outdone in imitation, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison used JavaOne to reassure Java devotees that Oracle's commitment to Java is strong and to drop a hint that Oracle/Sun may get into Netbooks, those ubertrendy devices that everyone is talking about but few are actually using.
Back to the App Store. Or, rather, app stores....
Sun isn't alone in copycat tactics. Nokia is also getting into the App Store clone wars, and Symbian has its own planned app store. Google launched its Android Market, and Microsoft, photocopiers at the ready, is beefing up its Windows Marketplace.
Pretty soon, consumers will have scads of choices of where to buy their applications...and so won't have a clue as to where to buy them.
It's not that application stores are a bad idea. It's just that it's not clear that we need a myriad of them, or that vendors will get the mileage from them that they expect, as Joel West points out.
Google Wave showed the industry that innovation is still possible, but requires vendors to discard existing paradigms for what is possible and how to deliver software.
In a similar fashion, platform vendors need to figure out novel ways to emulate the best of what Apple has delivered in its App Store, but reinvent the concept for their own customers. We don't need App Store clones. We need new ways of delivering and consuming applications.
Unless the industry is ready to declare Apple the sole source of inspiration, then different vendors should pave different paths.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
One has to wonder if Apple must exert so much control in order to deliver a superior customer experience. Reading through the October 2008 edition of Macworld magazine, I was troubled to read about Apple's poor treatment of its partners.
Microsoft grew to be a multibillion-dollar company by largely catering to its partner ecosystem. Apple? Fan I may be, but it's almost sickening to see how condescendingly the company treats its partners.
Take Apple's management of the iPhone App Store. Apple has been delaying updates to iPhone applications by a week or more, and apparently without any communication to its developer community as to why the delays are happening, or when to expect an update to go live.
That's the developer's problem, right? Exactly, as Fraser Speiers, owner of Connected Flow (Exposure Flickr application on the iPhone), details:
I don't have a problem with updates being reviewed (by Apple prior to posting), but it has to go a lot faster...Given the no-demos rule, an app lives or dies by App Store reviews. It's incredibly frustrating to watch review after review complain about a bug that you fixed and "shipped" two weeks ago.
In other words, Apple's lack of communication and service is hurting its developers, who already have to give up a big chunk of revenue from application sales to Apple. Apple is making them pay for poor service.
Not that Apple is reserving this customer disservice solely for iPhone application developers. It also takes a pound of flesh from its iPod and iPhone accessory developers. How?
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