The last year or so has seen one of the biggest changes in distributing mobile applications – the rise of the App Store. It has had a huge effect on all areas of development, especially in the gaming sector, which thrives on snack-sized gaming sessions. Here in San Francisco at the tenth Game Developer Conference (GDC), a number of sessions and panels have been specifically focussed on this new distribution channel. To call it a new channel though is a little bit short-sighted, given that stores have been around since the end of the twentieth century (such as Handango), and Nokia's N-Gage store is widely seen as the first mobile gaming app store for a single handset family. Read on...
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Who claimed that App Stores are the answer then? I don't recall any suggestion that they are.
App Stores are A Good Thing exactly because they solve a number of very important business issues that developers had in the past. They also introduce a number of new issues, but (and I can say this after 10 years in this business) I rather have these new issues than the older issues, which were a lot worse than the new issues.
The problems mentioned are the exact problems all mass-market suppliers have, and the solutions are the same solutions that all mass-market suppliers apply.
They're almost certainly a fad, although diehard iPhone users may disagree, i suspect that that is because the iPhone lacks much of the built-in functionality of other platforms.
Steve did an article about what applications he actually needs to download when he gets a new device, a while ago.
What may be more important going-forward is content stores. I.e. not applications but music, books, newspapers, games, video, radio. etc etc.
The Ovi store is a Bad Thing because it doesn't work, for me anyway. It won't let me sign in from my handset. Since a lot of people are now selling their apps only through the Ovi store, a lot of apps are now unavailable to me.
An anonymous post, because I'm about to say something a bit controversial.
Frankly, app developers are a bunch of headless chickens who just want to follow the latest trend and do whatever is 'trendy' at the time. They do no objective analysis of the market, because they're too lazy for that, and what's worse they dominate the conversation about mobile on the internet, totally distorting the real picture. I'm not in the least bit surprised about the anecdote at the end - this typifies the behaviour of app developers. Trend-chasing, losers.
There, I said it.
From my experience the key factor for app stores is ease of content search and installation... this is succes factor for AppStore and Android Market. Average user of iPhone download 40 apps per year, Android 60... of Symbian & BB less than 0,4. Well last two platform have very fragmented distribution... This is the key value of AppStores to the ecosystem... it's not a place for promotion&advertisement... social networks, viral marketing are tools for getting critical mass. Coming to Mr.Lee... Most of the state of the art opinion leaders from US... if they say world leading they think fifty states leading... they are greenhorn to the industry but with almost 300 mln audience they opinons are the most populated among blogs, industry portals etc. Smartphone is european invention with european roots. Symbian still has 50% global share but this does not necessarily mean propotion of the business opportunity for developers. If I got started today I would not stick to any single platform... built small tool test at one platform segment and then strech product to other platforms. Todays market fragmentation prevent companies to grow from one segment. I would think about product as a service, and about platform as a channel...
Am I the only one to notice that the figures on that chart are all way off what they are? the nintendo ds should be the largest there, RIM should be more than apple, psp should be below rim and ds and above apple... Where did these guys get these info? Unless it is just american stats which in anyway it is still incorrect because RIM still sells more than the iphone there.
These stats are directly misleading for the sheer fact of promoting the iphone... The developers are just ignorant and that explains why s60 is not on the graph, although mayb it is just too much to fit 😊 try writing 200 million on that graph.
Are you having a laugh? Why would they put 200 million on for Symbian when:
A) Not every single one of those phones are new, IE most of them will use old technology (Amd older Feature Packs)
B) The download of extra apps for Symbian handsets is abysmal, he'll a lady in my office doesn't even know her N97 can install extra apps, not that it would do her any good anyway coz she'd run out of C disk space!
C) With the fragmentation of Symbian handsets it's a developers nightmare! Why develop for Symbian when you can develop in an easy to write language, central distrbituion store and at most 2 different models of phone?!
God people go on qbout the Apple Koolaid but IMO every manufacturer has their own "Koolaid" drinkers! "Symbian says AppStore are bad! So they're bad! Haha poor iPhone users have to get all the apps they should get normally through the crappy Appstore! Not us superior Symbian users!"
Well you do know that the most downloaded thing from the Appstore is games right? Of course EVERY major mobile (and console) developer making games for the iPhone MUST mean something a little bit more than "They only doit coz the iPhone has hype!" huh?! The iPhones been out for 3 frigging years now how long can the fuggin hype last huh?! Ninty has themselves said the iPhone is a threat to their business, not Symbian with their "Monstrous" 200 million handsets, not Google not even RIM. APPLE are with the iPhone.
/Rant over
Upset wrote:Are you having a laugh? Why would they put 200 million on for Symbian when:A) Not every single one of those phones are new, IE most of them will use old technology (Amd older Feature Packs)
B) The download of extra apps for Symbian handsets is abysmal, he'll a lady in my office doesn't even know her N97 can install extra apps, not that it would do her any good anyway coz she'd run out of C disk space!
C) With the fragmentation of Symbian handsets it's a developers nightmare! Why develop for Symbian when you can develop in an easy to write language, central distrbituion store and at most 2 different models of phone?!
A) There are still million of V5 phones out there and still millions more being sold as we speak.
B) The download of apps from Ovi alone (not including all the other places apps can be got from) was averaging 22 per second by the most recent information. That's nearly 2 million per day. Is that abysmal?
C) Develop for one V5 needs only small changes to port to another, done properly only the UI needs adjusting. MVC exists outside of the Apple world you know! Actually, it's true that no development method is as lovely as Objective/Cocoa on XCode, but nonoe of them are much different once you know it.
The popularity of the App store actually caused interest in Ovi, and helped Symbian app sales a lot.
"A) There are still million of V5 phones out there and still millions more being sold as we speak.
B) The download of apps from Ovi alone (not including all the other places apps can be got from) was averaging 22 per second by the most recent information. That's nearly 2 million per day. Is that abysmal?
C) Develop for one V5 needs only small changes to port to another, done properly only the UI needs adjusting. MVC exists outside of the Apple world you know! Actually, it's true that no development method is as lovely as Objective/Cocoa on XCode, but nonoe of them are much different once you know it.
The popularity of the App store actually caused interest in Ovi, and helped Symbian app sales a lot."
A) Even if you use this, there are millions more iPhone OS based devices on the Market right now than V5 phones, about 80million I think and just think what will happen to that number once the *Sniggers* iPad comes out. Again, my original point stands. It's still the safest and easiest to go with Apple right now, it's not hype or favouritism which many die hard Symbian peeps are trying to convey
B) Uh, I think you should alter this one a bit. Sure it's had that many DOWNLOADS a day, but not all have been apps 😉. Who knows how many apps are actually getting d/l from the Ovi store? No one but Nokia. I wonder why they won't release that info?
C) Ive taken a look into both systems, and barring the police state of Apple objecting apps the Appstore is A LOT easier to get your app made and onto the store than Nokias attempts. The fact Nokia came a year plus later than Apple, they're efforts are abysmal yes.
I will thank you for your appropriate response though, not once did you resort to name calling, bravo 😊
Though I'm not a developer, with what little I know about that end of the business I would disagree.
App stores, and web apps in general are important in mobile because of the nature of the devices.
Web apps and walled gardens was a flawed model on the desktop, well ,because of how we use computers, the big screens and other factors.
Web apps, and their respective app stores, work because browsing on 3-4 inch screens for hours on end, on devices with limited battery life, is not ideal.
Regarding ignoring Symbian for app development: look its impolitic and nobody likes to say it blatantly, but aside from E-series and N-series users, most Nokia customers don't spend money on applications after the purchase of their devices. E or N series owners, and iPhone users are more likely to spend money on applications then is somebody in an emerging market who just bought a Nokia 5230 or a C-series device. Developers go where the money is.
Upset wrote:A) Even if you use this, there are millions more iPhone OS based devices on the Market right now than V5 phones, about 80million I think and just think what will happen to that number once the *Sniggers* iPad comes out. Again, my original point stands. It's still the safest and easiest to go with Apple right now, it's not hype or favouritism which many die hard Symbian peeps are trying to convey
Nope. iPhone market is saturated and a dev might put in hundreds of hours of dev time and sell 200 downloads at 99c each. It's a common story. Pick any idea and put it into AppStore and there will be half a dozen there already, half of them free. The Apple Appstore is not what it was 12 months ago.
As for the iPAd! LOL! You need huge pockets if you believe that these and phones are in the same market. No voice. It's a different device, it has a different use.
Upset wrote:
B) Uh, I think you should alter this one a bit. Sure it's had that many DOWNLOADS a day, but not all have been apps 😉. Who knows how many apps are actually getting d/l from the Ovi store? No one but Nokia. I wonder why they won't release that info?
You may specuate if you like, but the serious players are there, QuickOffice, Google, YouTube, FaceBook, BBC all feel the need to cover Symbian because the numbers can't be ignored.
Ovi lacks fart piano and the chaff and crap that stuffs the appstore. Try looking at the comments on many of the iphone apps, there is so much dross on there with people unable to get refunded for useless apps.
Upset wrote:
C) Ive taken a look into both systems, and barring the police state of Apple objecting apps the Appstore is A LOT easier to get your app made and onto the store than Nokias attempts. The fact Nokia came a year plus later than Apple, they're efforts are abysmal yes.
The fact that I can go straight to a developer website and download my app directly either to the phone or for side-loading and I have been able to do that since long before any apple app store appeared is not abysmal. I can set up my own website and sell my own app. I can sell through several third party appstores, or I can submit to Ovi. Or do all of them and the customers don't need to jailbreak as they do to use cydia.
I'm glad that you have taken a look at two of the available systems and it's true that one is easier than the other (but neither is particularly difficult). Now look at the rest.
Upset wrote:
I will thank you for your appropriate response though, not once did you resort to name calling, bravo 😊
I don't do name calling. It's a shame that you couldn't respond in kind by resisting offering that condescending last comment.
Unregistered wrote:
B) The download of apps from Ovi alone (not including all the other places apps can be got from) was averaging 22 per second by the most recent information. That's nearly 2 million per day. Is that abysmal?
And 21 of those 22 downloads per second is a Hannah Montana wallpaper.
Listen up, troll.. Nokia never broke it down by apps and wallpapers. They've got 22 downloads per second, not 22 apps per second. Nokia will not, and probably won't for some time, give out application download numbers. You can bet your bottom dollar that they're abysmal.
What the iPhone did was make a lot of people realize the potential of their phones. Many, many people used to purchase phones and didn't know what they could do with them - they didn't know about sites like Handango. They didn't even use the calendar feature - talking and texting were king. In the U.S. they just wanted the cheapest phone available. And data plan? Who would pay for that? I think it's funny that people who wouldn't have plunked down money for a smartphone or a data plan have changed their mind based on the "wonders" of the iPhone. I saw a commercial a few days ago that went something like this... "I took a video of my baby's first steps, then I sent it to all my relatives, then I called all of them on a conference call. I wouldn't have been able to do all this if it weren't for my iPhone!" Rubbish! But that's what people believe, so everyone wanted an iPhone to do all these things and they want apps apps apps! And they're sooo excited about it. I think it's incredible. I wonder if Wi-Fi had been available on more carrier phones, if people would have done more and maybe the app craze would be more tempered.
Jonnycat26 wrote:Nokia will not, and probably won't for some time, give out application download numbers. You can bet your bottom dollar that they're abysmal.
Quite right. They're embarrassingly low, I bet. In particular the revenue numbers must not be anything to brag about, but the download numbers are probably fairly low, too. Note also Nokia's problem of huge fragmentation due to many, many different device modelsincompatible with each other (there are not that many apps per phone model, even if the total for all different models is probably a decent number).
The 200 million smartphones i spoke about is all either fp1, fp2 or v5 phones. And yes creating apps for fp1 will ensure that it will work flawlessly for fp2 and needing just minor ui tweaks to work with s60v5. To cover even older phones you can even build off the basic pre-fp1 maintenance release os and it will work on all others. So the talk of fragmentation is not as big as it seem; only if you build an app with specific fp2 libraries will others become affected.
If you decide to call some of the 200 million phones old, what guarantee do you have that all 80 million iphone+ipods are fully functional today?
We can write apps in qt now that will work with little change on symbian^4, which is the route to take currently. Symbian have more app programming option than any other os: java, native c++, flash, python, qt, wrt and c language.. Sooooo many options.
Listen up you Nokia trolls, the iPhone OS platform includes the iPhone, the iPhone touch and now the ipad....it means in most cases the same game app will soon be able to run in more than 100 million actively used devices, who�s owners are keen into actually buying apps for - compare that with Nokia�s joke of a store...
Not entirely related to the article, but certainly to some of the posts in this thread, as a multi-platform developer, one of the huge benefits of the Symbian OS is just how open it really is. 75% of what we do, unfortunately can't be done on other OS's, be it call recording, SMS filtering, true device lock down (for Anti Theft apps and such). None of this can be done on the iPhone without jail breaking ( and even then some of this still can't be done). Blackberry offers a very ugly native UI for the most part and a horrible user experience when it comes to installing apps, and Android is still constantly changing and breaking apps with each update (even worse than the break between S60 3rd & 5th in many cases). WM is just littered with freeware, so it's nearly impossible make money.
As was already mentioned, the ability to sell apps directly is also a big benefit to every other platform excluding iPhone. Honestly, I wish we could take advantage of the platform, but it's honestly as bad or worse than Brew - a completely controlled platform, with little to no low level API access, which leaves building interesting apps for other platforms.
My 2 cents.
Josh @ Killer Mobile
The previous comment illustrates why Symbian is the closest thing to a computer platform. An example for the iPhone is when your app needs to influence settings (perhaps the poor iPhone owner has had to turn off location because the thing is so battery thirsty). Your app needs the setting on, you can detect that the setting is wrong no problem, but instead of offering the user a dialog box with the option to switch location on you have to completely exit the app and run iPhone settings app. This is very very poor and I see no justification for it. It's not like other platforms suffer because they allow access to settings.
As for the troll who mentioned that the ipad will mean 100 million device market, I think you need to stay more closely in touch with earth. Clearly on whatever planet you live on there is poor communication to earth. Getting an app onto these devices will be like winning the lottery. Only a few will ever get decent numbers out, the vast majority will invest massive time and effort and end up with nothing or the minimum tenner.
I agree with you N/A and Johnnycat126.
I would love to see Nokia's return numbers on the N97. Rafe and crew love to talk about how many they sold, but how about the returns? This always seems to escape them. If Nokia sells a million but 500K are returned, would you still call the N97 a success?
As for the iPad. Chances are it will sell quite well. Considering they were selling over 25K an hour. Name just one Nokia phone that even came close to this. That's more or less a million in just a week alone. Funny thing is, Apple does not even consider Nokia to be competition, but sees Google as the real threat. That alone should speak volumes. A first time mobile phone maker comes on to the market and upstages the so called king of the hill. Too funny.
Luckily Nokia has all of those bottom feeder phones to keep them alive because if they had to compete with only the N97, or X6, or whatever, they would be dead.
I have just bluetoothed to the E90 some trial softwares in Handytools to my external card. I dont seem to be able to find them to activate it. Can someone please point me the way? Thanks.