To go alongside the update of Truphone on the iPhone and iPod Touch to include Skype, CEO Geraldine Wilson told the GTD Times that because of the ease of use for the developer, they have no plans to offer future developments to platforms that were not supported by an App Store similar to Apple's endeavour.
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I can understand the point that Truphone are making, but it seems a bit of a cop out.
Yes it is harder to get distribution going without an app store, but it is not impossible. In the Symbian World companies like Mobibmate, Fring and JoikuSpot have all had considerable success thanks to clever marketing. Perhaps this is the area Truphone might considering addressing rather than blaming the distribution tools mechanisms?
There's another unspoken factor going on here too of course. First mover advantage - getting your app out their first (especially in the crowded IM / VoIP space) is very important. That applies to both an app store and normal distribution. IM / VoIP is a very crowded space in the S60 world - the same will be true of Android / iPhone etc. of course in due course.
I imagine Nokia's decision to get into IM (see Nokia Messaging from Nokia World) might be an influence too.
I imagine it'll become a moot point at some point this year though since Nokia seem likely to update their Download! offering.
I suppose the question is: why has it taken Nokia so long to improve Download!, which is, to be honest, totally rubbish at the moment?
Could be a number of factors here, namely given the margins/business model for what must be a highly competitive segment, saving costs by becoming a strictly dev-only team, rather than having marketing/distribution overheads as well might have some bearing.
However as Truphone is a free download and Nokia has a sort of (albeit shockingly poor) store with its Downloads, I don't really understand.
If Nokia ever does a decent App Store, I think the big question will be, are there any developers left.
With piracy on S60 rampant, many developers will or already have abandoned S60, a developer friend of mine in the USA has made over $70000 from a $0.99 app in 5 months, I doubt many S60 developers have ever made that sort of money in such a short space of time.
Good. Let the pressure rise. The sooner Nokia/Symbian come up with a deccent Application-Selling system, the better.
It is simply a matter of where you as a developer make the most money.
If sales on Apple Appstore are an order of magnitude (10 times) bigger than on other platforms (like Symbian), it makes business sense to allocate all your resources to selling on the Apple AppStore, because each invested dollar/euro/pound/whatever will have a return that is 10 times bigger too. You will move to other platforms by the time the Appstore market is either saturated, or when you will start to make similar amounts of money on those other platforms.
There must be something else going on - the comment makes no sense on the surface.
The App Store takes 30% of any profit, it controls distribution, and it can completely and arbitrarily block my application if Apple doesn't like it. I'm a mobile developer and I can assure you that this is the worst deal that I can imagine.
I realize that Apple has said that they will make no money on the App store and they are doing it as a service to developers. Analysts meanwhile are predicting that Apple will make almost a billion dollars in 2010. The billion dollar figure it surely too high but the point is that Apple is lying. The purpose of the App Store is to make money and to weed out any apps that might compete with Apple.
So, I believe that either Truphone is being misquoted, or they have some sort of alterior motive for making this statement.
One other thing. I'm not saying that any centralized application distribution system is bad. I'm saying that the Apple App Store is bad.
Good. I hope that even more developers abandon this sinking Symbian ship.
Nokia needs an app store as soon as possible. Otherwise, they'll have no choice but to be a latecomer to Android, since Apple has no intention of licensing OS X Mobile.
Whatever you think of Download, it's very odd how little it has changed over the years. It's practically the same weird service it's always been, with bizarre inconsistent categories and lots of major S60 apps and publishers completely missing.
It's like they gave up developing Download completely. Hopefully it will be replaced ASAP.
It's not about the total installed userbase but about how many of that user base actually add apps to their devices. For most S60 is a feature phone. They either don't know you can add apps, it's too complex that they don't bother, have no data allowance and no clue how to get WiFi working on it, no idea how to load them from their computers as they don't have the software or don't even know where to look for apps.
On the iPhone / iPod Touch you have a much larger userbase of people that install free apps / buy apps. Many more of them have unlimited data or can work the WiFi on their device. And they all have iTunes installed.
Developers are ditching S60 because regardless of the installed base, the Market of people to sell apps to is vastly smaller than the iPhone.
FastLaneJB2, I think the best comparison is with text messages.
Phone software needs to be easy enough to be an impulse purchase, just like SMS messages or indeed phone calls themselves. The whole reason so many people are willing to pay for text messaging or mobile calling is because it's so convenient and easy to use.
If your customers can press a few buttons and get something useful or fun on your phone, then you've got a potentially popular service. The more hoops they have to jump through, the less likely they are to use the service. Every hoop between them and the purchase shaves a certain percentage off your sales.
People, you take them too serious it seems.
Fring is the king of IM currently and happily ships to all devices. I assume Mig33 is the king on J2ME phones too.
So a CEO with a non popular product made some sort of exclusive deal with Apple and uses some untrue arguments as reason.
Is there "Download!" application even on S40 "dumb" devices? Yes? End of discussion 😊
Tzer2 wrote:Whatever you think of Download, it's very odd how little it has changed over the years. It's practically the same weird service it's always been, with bizarre inconsistent categories and lots of major S60 apps and publishers completely missing.It's like they gave up developing Download completely. Hopefully it will be replaced ASAP.
What they need is ignore all those .NET and Objective C 2 (OS X) lobby and ship a signed Java applet that will do things under any browser on any OS. Multi platform support and simplicity of PC interface is the key to iPhone success.
Download! is frankly an embarrassment.
On an N95-1 (v30) it takes minutes to update the catalogue, frequently stalling and is apparently incapable of remembering all of the icons in one folder at a time without reloading them. In perhaps 20 attempts I have managed to download one piece of software (a card game) that would have looked ropey on my old 6230, let alone an N-series phone. The other downloads either failed to initialise or their advertised price ('0'😉 was a lie and on installing I was immediately asked to pay up or the game/app quit.
If I were a developer I'd be vary wary basing my business model around the current Download! service - it's unreliable, unwieldy and slow. Not to mention the costs of piracy.
And to think of the head start Nokia had on Apple. When I got my N95 over a year ago I couldn't believe how many 3rd party apps there were. Now I look at an iPhone in envy. More apps than you can shake a stick at and none of the hoops I have to run through, whilst I can't think of a single app that's come out in the past 3 months (bar WeFi) that I've actually kept.
I hope there are developers working flat-out behind the scenes on 5th Edition software as by the time I get my hands on an N97 I'm worried it'll be an attractive, powerful but empty shell, especially as many current apps/games will be incompatible...
Didn't Nokia recently have a survey/questionnaire for users of Dowload!? It seems an update is in the works - too late, but at least its in the works.
Unregistered wrote:The App Store takes 30% of any profit, it controls distribution, and it can completely and arbitrarily block my application if Apple doesn't like it. I'm a mobile developer and I can assure you that this is the worst deal that I can imagine.
One other thing. I'm not saying that any centralized application distribution system is bad. I'm saying that the Apple App Store is bad.
And dispite all that, its 10 times better than anything Nokia have. And equally more succesful, for both Apple and the developers.