The smart phone has come of age of that there’s doubt at all . We track our lives by them, play on them, buy through them and comment socially via them. But, is today’s smart phone anything other than a shiny piece of plastic without the applications that run on it? Who puts the smart in smart phone?
Years ago when mobile phones were in their infancy you bought a phone based on a pre-defined set of features, and those features were static for the life of the phone. You didn’t get any fancy updates that suddenly made the phone perform a new function, it was a pretty static object who’s main functions were phone calls and text messaging.
In the 21st century we now buy a platform on which we can run a set of applications. Essentially we are buying a computer that has the ability to make calls and send text messages. Our concerns today are more around the quality of the screen, the quality of the camera and how much storage it has. Processor power is also becoming a factor as we seek to push the limits further and further.
On top of this platform sits the applications and you can pretty much download whatever you want allowing you to build a unique experience that fits in around you. This builds an interesting symbiosis where the application developers and the phone/OS manufacturers rely on one another in order to make things work. After all who wants to buy a high powered device with a shiny screen and loads of memory but nothing to run on it?
The relationship between device maker and software developer is, however, an uneasy one. Take Apples relatively recent change to their terms and conditions that require you to give up 30% of your profits if you sell through an app on an Apple device. This seemed to have been a pretty controversial move which led to a lot of people crying foul and some pretty naive commentators suggesting the death of Amazon’s Kindle as a result. Something I don’t think was ever going to be possible in the real world, due to the success of that particular device outside of Apple’s eco-system.
Is it so bad that companies like Apple demand a share of your profit in return for them providing you with storage and transaction services as well as a pretty decent marketing engine in the form of iTunes and their app store?
Does Apple deserve a cut? Are other mobile/OS providers like Google missing out on an opportunity to cash in on their own success? Is it enough that they provide a platform and so anyone making use of that platform for personal gain should pay a fee to do so? If developers refused to use the platform or chose a different platform to avoid paying the fee would it lower the value of the platform itself?
Obviously Apple are in a very strong position as the iPhone and the iOS are a very strong and stable platform. It has helped developers like Rovio make a fortune, a win win situation that proves the symbiosis works. That is not the only example either, the iTunes store is chock full of applications that is making people a lot of money, some faster than others but the relationship works and it works cross platform. Google have proven their approach is just as successful as Apple’s without the extra restrictions/charges. So who’s right? and who’s the boss the developer or the platform provider?
Are app stores full of gullible idiots who have fallen foul of the belief they matter? I don’t think so, I think the app stores are full of some very smart people who have seen the potential in the platform and in many cases they have seen things the bigger companies have failed to. It’s in situations like this that Google wins over Apple. Google’s openness allows developers to very easily bring added value to Andriod improving things that fall short of the mark or taking the OS just that step further towards meeting everyone’s needs. Apple on the other hand can’t or won’t move as fast thanks to their built in restrictions.
Take the notification system for example. On Android this is useful, un-intrusive and can be extended and tweaked through different applications allowing you to add the ability to have messages read to you while you are driving for example. On iOS the notification system couldn’t me more useless. It takes many gestures to get at the same information you see at a glance on Android, and it completely get’s in the way when you are in the middle of a different task and it decides to pop up a message.
Jailbreaking your iPhone does give you the ability to install apps to improve things, the messaging system can be improved using an app after the jailbreak is applied. But this is a process many people are nervous of and means you are almost always behind on your OS updates as you need to wait for the jailbreak developers to figure out how to exploit the new OS. It’s annoying and inflexible.
Apple are improving things a lot in iOS5 and they appear to have taken notice of the developers because the new messaging system has a lot of commonalty with the jailbreak apps, in fact, much of iOS5 appears to have been ‘inspired’ by the jailbreak community. Have Apple realized the value of the development community at last? Did they get too cocky and fall foul of the ‘we know best’ mistake so prevalent in large corporations?
Who knows? For me there is no boss in the mobile world, they all need each other to continue innovating and challenging each other, pushing the boundaries beyond what we currently know to be possible.
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