app

I think it's a certainty that Apple will introduce an ad serving platform for the iPhone (and any tablet) in 2010. This will amount to a checkbox that developers will check when submitting their app to the store. Doing so will allow Apple to place ads on the app in return for a check in the mail to the developer for the impressions.

A Google spokesperson confirmed for eWEEK that there are 16,000 Android free and paid apps, not 20,000 as others previously reported. (iTunes App store is around 120k now with over 130k apps having been "seen").

A few more data points re. Android:

• There are 5 Android instantiations of varying distribution through the first two weeks of December: 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 and the fresh 2.0.1. It seems Google is prepared to see that number go much higher. You can see the distribution of platform versions in a pie chart here:

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

• If a developer chooses only the most popular platform version, he gets to target about 54% of the installed base.
• Motorola's Droid ships with only 256 MB available for app storage. Google Android does not support installation of apps to SD cards, so developers face a very real limit. Many of the most popular iPhone apps (games) easily exceed 100 MB, so not very many quality apps would fit on Droid (and some won't fit at all: Magellan RoadMate app ($59.99) alone weighs in at 1.36GB). That's why Droid only offers users three measly panels for displaying apps; users probably won't even be able to fill up two before they run out of storage space.

Droid comes with a built-in turn-by-turn app Google's Maps Navigation likely because no other nav app would come close to fitting into the Droid's limited 256MB app storage space.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Android-Device-Dashboard-Highlights-Fragmentation-804428/?kc=EWKNLITA12222009STR4

One observer has posted that WMM (Microsoft's answer to iTunes App Store) has 520 apps in it now. The store launched in Nov 1 with 281 apps. That means there will be about 300 apps added in the first two months. The growth rate is therefore about 150/mo.

This has to be the slowest growing app store among all the contenders, though Palm may also be similar.

By way of comparison, iTunes App Store is growing at about 10k apps/mo. with Android about 3 to 5k/mo.

How does this make sense coming from the company that is known for "developers, developers, developers" and is the largest software company in the world?

http://msmobiles.com/news.php/8847.html

On Tuesday Apple will cross over 100,000 apps on the App Store for an installed base of ~50 million devices.

On Thursday Microsoft will launch Windows 7 with 8500 apps "certified" for an installed base of 1 billion PCs.

iPhone: not your father's ecosystem.

When thinking about the number of devices shipping out of Apple, and the relative value of those units compared to the competition you have to always think of the platform.

The market leader Nokia claimed to have sold 16+ million smartphones in the quarter. When comparing platforms, to whatever Apple ships in iPhones you have to add the iPod touch units. I see that number being about half of the iPhone numbers or about 4 million. Let's say 10 to 12 million as a range for the platform. Already this is within striking range of Nokia.

It may sound that Apple has some catching up to do, however the important thing is that most of the Nokia devices are not uniformly addressable by developers because they are different platforms and the Symbian platform itself will be broken next year as it has been broken many times before. This is also true for Blackberry and Windows Mobile and will become true for Android as vendors fork and splinter the code to differentiate.

This already puts Apple in the pole position today in terms of contiguous addressable units volumes.

I cannot over-emphasize the importance of this platform effect. It's what made Windows dominant and it should be the most important issue in the planning of new mobile products, but it clearly isn't for Apple's competitors. Either product planners are ignorant of history or completely hamstrung by other constraints on their businesses (I expect the latter).

As a result it's inevitable that Apple will have a dominant platform. The numbers in apps and consumption of apps already are telling this story, and devs are voting with their code in a landslide. But going into 2010, this will become evident in the units and Apple share numbers will accelerate toward lead position.

The bogie therefore is to look for contiguously addressable installed base. On this basis of competition, I expect at least 100 million for Apple at the end of next year and less than 10 million for any competitor. At that point the game will be officially over.

The implications of the new app transaction model are profound. To begin with, consider the following:

• 10 MB limit - Devs can now get their apps under 10MB much more easily. This allows them to take advantage of users downloading over the carrier networks and not wi-fi. They can offer more content via in app purchase and make up the difference.
• Rankings - It will be curious to see how Apple changes the rankings over time. "Top Paid" and "Top Free" just don't really don't make sense anymore with this model. Will they make "Top Freemium" or something equivalent?
• Infrastructure - Developers have to deal with content delivery and updates to that content. Apple handles the transaction in the normal fashion and takes their 30% but then they leave it up to the developers to actually get the content to the iPhone. What if there is a bug in the content? The developer has to deal with making sure the user is notified of the update and then initiate the update.
• Piracy - There has been a lot of talk about how this may help fight piracy but I think the numbers will tell a different story.
• Apps as content - The deeper story relates to the transformation of the app store into a content store. I made that prediction a year ago but had no idea how it would happen. In the long term I expect Apple to merge the iTunes music/video content management system with the app store content management. This way you could buy music/video/books/games from within an app and have it available through your iTunes UI.
• Addiction - "Apping" as the activity of using iPhone apps has come to be known, is already something that did not exist a year ago but has proven to be wildly useful/common/profitable. Only a year has passed and we are already in the realm of uncharted waters.

Curious possibility:

More companies have promotional apps on the iPhone than permit their employees to use one. About 30% of the Fortune 200 already have iPhone apps.