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Mobile Operators Fight App Store Fragmentation
angry tapir writes "Twenty-four mobile network operators have formed the Wholesale Applications Community to avoid fragmenting the apps market and to give developers one point of entry to all the members. The Wholesale Applications Community members include: AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone." The vision seems to be eventually to create one unified app market in addition to Google's and Apple's. The article quotes an analyst noting that the mobile operators have "a poor track record with this type of industry consortium."
One thing that allows the Apple app store to be so popular is that the number of screen sizes it need to support is limited to one resolution, with a second larger screen announced but not out yet, and that'll come with a scaling tool so apps that are designed for the small screen will look okay on the bigger screen.
It seems that in order to have an app store that's cross platform, we'll need a cross platform hardware standard too. Apple's app store is a hit because it allows developers to score big with comparatively little effort, especially if the developer already knows how to program with XCode on the Mac. How does this proposed alliance claim to be able to get the same benefits?
Twenty-four mobile network operators have formed the Wholesale Applications Community to avoid fragmenting the apps market and to give developers one point of entry to all the members.
You say "ah-void frag-muhn-tation of the mar-ket", I say "mohn-op-oh-lee."
Anyone want to guess how they'll leverage this? My guess is that if you piss off one mobile carrier with your app (or blame them for a problem), you'll be blocked from all of them. Plus, of course, pushing the carrier's commissions as high as possible.
Please help metamoderate.
I'd like to remind the mods that there is no moderation called "-1; I don't get it!"
It's clearly Apple vs. Google vs. Everyone else as it is. A couple of computer companies came up with novel and interesting ways to sell software on phones and now you have all the phone companies freaking out trying to figure out how to do the same thing and still compete.
Their business is telephones, not software. There really isn't any other choice the telecoms have. They know they'll be more effective working together and pooling talent, but will they deliver? I'm sure most people doubt their ability to come up with an answer, but you never know...
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Mobile operators don't fight "fragmentation", what they fight is their loss of control. With Android and iPhone, the era of operator-controlled feature phones is coming to an end even in the US. They don't want to become the dumb pipes and commodity service that by all rights they should become.
Wireless companies are trying not to be dumb pipes. And increasingly that's what they are becoming. Before Droid, on Verizon if you wanted a feature you had to pay more per month. The Wireless companies at first were happy about the smart phones because everyone had to buy a dataplan. Great, more revenue per customer. And that is the measure in the industry: how much can we suck from our customers.
Well Apple came along and launched their app store for the iPhone. And how much does ATT see from the app store? $0.
I've often wondered when the Carriers would hijack Android and do what they've done to other phones in the past and implement a "on our network, you use our Appstore."
The carriers see Apple earning hundreds of millions and now want their share of the pie.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
we need a open app store not where you need to pay a fee to MAKE FREE APPS. and one where you do not give 30% of the sale for paid apps.
Obviouly the iTunes store is McDonalds.
Android is Burger King.
And these clowns are fighting to be Wendy's?
Or are they trying to be those hybrid KFC-Taco Bell-Pizza Hut stores?
changed the mobile industry singlehandedly. While the transition of power is not ultimate, consumers in the mobile marketplace now have a new found power over the purveyors of the wireless service. AT&T, Verizon, et al, are now in reactionary mode. That is good for their customers.
Palm and Winmo supported downloadable apps forever, they just didn't move. Vendors were fighting rampant piracy, end users often didn't know what was available except through rumor, and stuff that you could download frankly sucked half the time.
The store concept is the killer app that makes the whole third-party app concept worth the phone OS vendor's time. I remember having innumerable problems keeping my the various junk on my Treo 650 working and compatible, and migrating from one phone to another while keeping app vendors serial numbers entered. I also remember downloading lots of different PRCs and them not working for my OS revision, or phone model, or carrier firmware. It was a mess, and the app store concept is a solution. They just took the concept of a package manager and put a credit card slot on it.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Sounds like we need some sort of cross platform language (e.g. Java), that has a common platform for mobile devices (e.g. J2ME). That allows for applications to run on different handsets via some sort of profile (e.g. MIDP, CLDC).
What are we waiting for...oh yes mobile makers to get there fingers out of their asses and start helping the consumer (e.g. through no vendor lock in).
I'd love to feel safe and warm knowing that any apps I've bought for my iPhone could be used on the new Samsung, or latest HTC device. As it stands I'm not able to swap hardware as easily as my investment in those apps is then lost...and this is what Apple wants (so do the others). Mobile makers don't want to compete on hardware specs alone, as that takes more time/money to develop than the software (hence a bigger potential loss if a rival comes out with better hardware that everyone uses 2 days after their release).
An Apple representative have openly admitted that their App store is not a cashcow. According to him, they break even but not much more. (Compared to Apple's other incomes I guess) The app store is useful because it adds value to the IPhones, which Apple then sell more of. It's the sale of phone itself which is the main income.
With this business-strategy in mind, we need to ask why phone companies such as AT&T and Telenor moves in. Why do they support a scheme which is most successfull as a way to sell more phones? Remember, these companies do not produce phones themselves. Is it because they'r uncomfortable with the power that Apple and Google now wield in the phone market and wish to support "nicer" businesspartners like Ericsson and Nokia?
Or are we seeing a hint that the network providers have come up with a new business plan, to compete against Apple and Google? What do they have up their sleeves?
Do you have evidence that people use apps on the Iphone more than other platforms, and that this is due to Apple?
There have been many blogs from various companies selling stuff on both iPhone and Android, showing that you earn more money on the iPhone application - an order of magnitude more when there is not an order of magnitude difference in devices. Look for Pinch Media reports as well as individual sales blogs.
(I'm not sure the paying for it matters - sure, it's great for Apple, but it's not a good point for us if you have to pay for things that on other platforms you download for free.)
As a consumer it very much matters. Paying for something means there are no, or fewer, ads which I greatly prefer (both from application performance and network throughput). If people are not buying apps for a platform then most apps will migrate to be ad supported.
Yes there will always be some purely free apps but I prefer more complex and interesting applications that really mostly come about from paid effort. I am pleased to reward a good application with financial support - that's why I paid for a lot of shareware too, even though that model does not work very well in the P.C. world (by that I mean any desktop, not just Windows).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley