Are App Stores Coming to a Carrier Near You?
There's an interesting discussion going around about the possibility of T-Mobile taking some cues from Apple with an app store of their own. Instead of offering it to a specific phone, T-Mobile wants to take things one step further and open up a platform for all of their mobile devices. Who can blame them? Their current mobile store is equivalent to a mess when compared with Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. However what is it that makes the App Store so appealing and will more carriers follow suit?
Buying Mobile Apps for Your Phone
The user experience of downloading an app from Apple's App Store is something to speak on. It's by far the best mobile user experience I've ever had. However, I've never been interested in purchasing and downloading apps from Microsoft or Verizon when it comes to my Motorola Q9c. Instead, I've headed straight to the developer's site or simply didn't bother. I don't think I'm alone in this situation. I've seen family members purchase ringtones and ringback tones galore, yet not one of them has ever bothered to purchase an application. There are three reasons why they may not have have never purchased an app from their respective carriers:
- The costs are ridiculous
- The offerings are not interesting
- They don't know what they're doing
If You're Going to do it, do it Right
Apple has offered resolutions for the aforementioned three reasons. The developers set the cost, not the carrier. A gang of great applications exist in Apple's App Store to please a variety of users with varying interests. However, these are not only great games, but the graphics and user interfaces are usually superior to applications on other mobile platforms.
On the other hand, most iPhone users are tech savvy. While it's simple enough for mainstream users to use, it's marketed to early adopters and geeks across the globe. You can bet your bottom dollar they know what they're doing. In turn, the App Store is a reflection of the iPhone userbase. This is a formula that T-Mobile and others would be wise to implement if they plan to pursue their own App Store.
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well, also the Apple App store only has 1 phone to focus on. Carriers will have the UI/IA burden of supporting multiple phones and in some cases multiple OSes from one maker (S40/S60 from Nokia). Then there's things like T-Mobile's refusal to let my GMail app run on my Nokia... it's not signed appropriately, so it will not run. When people run into a couple of things like that, they just say "oh skip it, this is too much hassle." Add in that not all phones make good platforms for apps (my 6133 is a flip with a decent screen.. but it's not touch and has a standard keyboard...).
One of the oft-overlooked things that helped the desktop apps market was that there were only 2 OSes to support - Windows and Mac OS and you didn't have to worry much about things like keyboard type and screen size. Complain about MSFT all you want, but they gave us one unified platform to write too - that's not true of the mobile market and it seems hard to write for/deploy on multiple platforms.
Valid point Rick! It'll be interesting to see how it plays out and which OSes get the most attention. I think favoritism is bound to show at some point.
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Great post. Apple is dominating the market and is a MUCH BIGGER name than T-mobile or Sprint, or any cell phone carrier, it's only natural
The Zune will be taking over soon!
Am I alone in being frustrated by the app store offerings? No irc client? no jabber?
I wonder of all those niche market apps that solve a problem that only a handful of users have. - the only way to get it out to those users is to submit for approval on the app store? Will it become polluted by apps that most everyone doesn't want?
Suppose it's like debian's apt really.
Nice post, thanks for the tips.
I agree that the Apple iStore is far superior to any user interface out there today for downloading applications to any type of mobile devices. It's also somewhat frustrating I'm sure that these developers aren't able to distribute their applications via their own web sites. While "we" know that Apple has developed all these Applications there are a many of folks, such as my parents, who do believe that b/c they are downloading from iTunes these applications come from Apple. I know that I've downloaded a number of applications now that simply don't work or cause my phone to constantly crashing & lock-up. Apple's needs to be careful to ensure these buggy applications don't give their brand a bad reputation. How does Apple go about testing all these applications?
I should type slower & proof before posting... the above comment should read "know that Apple *hasn't* developed" & change "crashing" to "crash"