The Appstore game …Apple vs Others
The astounding success of the iTunes store, in selling applications for IPhone has prompted several phone vendors to come out with their own application stores.Nokia has done that with the ‘OVI store’,Google with the ‘Android App Market’,RIM with it’s ‘Blackberry App store’…etc .Every one of them wants to replicate the IPhone model and thereby hope to make a great deal of money out of it.My guess is they will fail..here’s why
Apple controls everything that can go into the IPhone..while others don’t
On IPhones ,one cannot install anything without iTunes.This makes it easy for application developers,since this is the only channel they need to concentrate on while building their applications.Especially so for developers making paid applications,they need not worry about any special copy protection mechanisms to prevent their apps from being pirated.Consistent and standard device specification on the IPhone makes it easy for developers to create rich apps with good usability. Users will constantly keep getting new apps and will keep buying!And the only place they can get this from the iTunes store!
The problem with all the other app stores promoted by vendors such as Nokia,RIM etc is that they have not been thought from ground up.Their devices have not been designed in a way that applications can only be installed through the app store.Their inbuilt mechanism for copy protection,falls way short of developer expectation,with the result that developers need to put in extra licensing features for their paid apps.So this is what i think will happen on these stores,application developers will put the free version of their apps on these app stores and direct users to their site to buy the paid version.This also saves them the commision they need to pay each time a sale of their application happens on the app stores. So if these app stores do not make any money, they will find it hard to justify their existense.And this is why in the current model Apple will win the game while others will need to find novel ways of attracting developers and customers to their app stores.
January 31st, 2010 at 5:40 am
You are completely right, however this not the only reason for Apple’s success.
Think of the app buying process in iTunes. You registers once and there after you can buy apps with one single click and it will installed in your device. and all this is done through one powerful desktop application not a website. It recognizes your phone, synchs it up. meanwhile you can listen Music and watch movies on it.
Take a look at the Android market place instead. Good God its ugly. I mean look at it, messy, apps dont have the same quality as iphone apps, hell you cant even search for apps. a total disaster I say even a 5 years old could do better than that.
Our geeky friends in Google seem to have taken the same approach as coding in marketing.