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iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Home
eldavojohn writes "A new site called App Rejections (somewhat slashdotted already) aims to provide a home for misfit apps. With Apple offering no documents or discussions on the matter of application rejections, this site might become a popular place to pick forbidden fruit. Could a third party horn in on Apple's monopoly in the iPhone application market?"
With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
Android was first released in October 2008, with the first device being available the same month - thats over a year ago. According to Apple, the iPhone sold more than 4 million units in the first 200 days, so wheres the equivalent Android sales explosion? Analysts are expecting Android sales to outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, but why is it going to take that long if Android is such a good competitor? It didn't take the iPhone anywhere near two and a half years to take a significant chunk of the market from competitors.
I'm not an Android hater, I haven't used it so I don't hold an opinion on it, but it seems to be held as the ultimate saviour on /., and I'm struggling to see why. Its not the iPhone I am worried about, its the Android series of phones...
With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
Android was first released in October 2008, with the first device being available the same month - thats over a year ago. According to Apple, the iPhone sold more than 4 million units in the first 200 days, so wheres the equivalent Android sales explosion? Analysts are expecting Android sales to outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, but why is it going to take that long if Android is such a good competitor? It didn't take the iPhone anywhere near two and a half years to take a significant chunk of the market from competitors.
I'm not an Android hater, I haven't used it so I don't hold an opinion on it, but it seems to be held as the ultimate saviour on /., and I'm struggling to see why. Its not the iPhone I am worried about, its the Android series of phones...
There is an analysis here, not entirely without flaws, that explains some of the problems Android is facing.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/21/inside_googles_android_and_apples_iphone_os_as_software_markets.html
One of the biggest ones is hardware: limited flash on board castrates applications.
And leaving some of control of the firmware to the handset makers is the single, biggest mistake you can do. One of the main reasons the software scene on Symbian is lo lousy. You end up with too many different versions of the OS in use at the same time, and in some cases updating will be very, very difficult (did it never happen that a give FW update was NOT available for your specific Nokia handset - and thus you were unable to use some applications? IN Europe this is very common).
And TOO different HW characteristics. Some people complain that Apple's 480x320 screen is no longer the coolest around.
Of course Apple is already working on updates to the display - but in such a way that applications and icons won't look like rubbish (like scaling on the Motorola Droid). I need non insider info to know they are: they would be dumb if they didn't - and they may be evil, but not stupid.
I expect an exact doubling of resolution in both axes, and this will of course happen a bit later than on the Android platform (854x480 current on Droid), and with some _very_ simple software support (developers will have to check if such a screen is available, otherwise apps will be scaled, I guess).
Roberto