Google: The Web, Not App Stores, is the Future Of Mobile Development

[sg.hill]

Okay sg.hill, I see aren't actually that far apart.

And seem to be getting closer with every post.

Please excuse the Rottweiler impression - I'm told it's just my style, but I guess it can be a bit up front sometimes.

No worries; makes things interesting.

But what they are doing is making products that make people feel fantastic about owning them.

One of the things that always stands out in my mind is the release of the 3rd gen iPod. It was at this time in my high school more and more kids starting getting the device. Soon it became the item to have...and those with competing products were ridiculed for not being able to afford an iPod. On more than one occasion the "knock-off" was returned, restocking fee paid, and the iPod made an appearance.

You do have a point that people feel great about owning these products. There is something to be said for how lousy people make each other feel for not having them as well.

I like your Palm story, but: Who's heard of Handango? And before you answer me, let me say with the greatest sensitivity: who cares?

This one blows me away. I started by saying:

Since the AppStore wasn't the first mobile application store, couldn't you argue it's wild success is because of marketing?

To which you responded:

There were lots of cartwheels before the Formula One racing car, but no-one accuses Mercedes of ripping off the wheelwright and village blacksmith

Which seems to clearly define the AppStore as a revolution to you. I brought up Handango because I see it as a substitute or predecessor to the AppStore. The AppStore is an evolution to me. It's slightly better than Handango, sure, but this wasn't anything near looking at a wheel and building a car.

It sounds like you have not heard of Handango. That makes what I originally said about Apple being successful because of their aggressive advertising all the more true. I can go out on the street and stop 10 people - I'll be stunned if 4 of them haven't heard of Apple's AppStore; I'll also be stunned if 2 of them have heard of Handango.

Handango is a ludicrous name [that sounds a bit like 'Fandango' and has nothing to do with anything] and was designed to fail - and I don't care if they are worth millions - so's Yahoo! Worth $44Bn to MS last year, worth $11Bn to the much smarter woman who replaced Jerry Yang.

More than being up-front, I'd say you come off as very authoritarian. Clearly you're much more interested and well-versed in marketing than I am, but Handango (hand-and-go) has much more to do with what they're selling -- handheld software on-the-go -- than Apple, Inc does with what they sell. "Was" designed to fail implies that it has failed...and it very much has not failed.

If you have to be in the know to find something as essential as an app for your device - and until Apple's App Store, that was the case, the model is not working as well as it could.

Hence why the comparison to Handango and my statement about marketing/advertising.

If you have to go to lots of different places to find something these apps - and until Apple's App Store, that was the case, the model is not working as well as it could.

No, it was not the case. It wasn't the first mobile application store that consolidated different vendors products for a single device. It was the first one I ever saw an advertisement for on TV or the 'L' though.

But I hear a hoard of people cry: 'G, you're just a Mac fanboy.. bla bla bla.

It's MacRumors...everyone here is either a fanboy or a troll. I'd have a pretty hard time saying I'm not a fanboy as I convince myself for the 5th straight month I don't really want a number pad on my $80 wireless Apple keyboard.

The evidence I rely upon for making this, of many outrageous statements, is the parlous state of the products they DO release! And I use MS as an example, because they are a classic example of how not to do it, yet most do.

What is with the constant MS bashing? Are you really under the impression they're just winging it in Redmond?

So then, 14 pages later I think we learned that we're pretty much saying the same thing. I think we also learned that the people who have taken a look at HTML5 and the constant progress of webapps with offline availability (currently via Google Gears, eventually via HTML5) are saying Google isn't far off in the least with their predictions.

 

[G58]

The organic bit

Quote:
Originally Posted by G58
I like your Palm story, but: Who's heard of Handango? And before you answer me, let me say with the greatest sensitivity: who cares?

This one blows me away. I started by saying:

Quote: Originally Posted by sg.hill
Since the AppStore wasn't the first mobile application store, couldn't you argue it's wild success is because of marketing?

To which you responded:
Quote: Originally Posted by G58
There were lots of cartwheels before the Formula One racing car, but no-one accuses Mercedes of ripping off the wheelwright and village blacksmith

Which seems to clearly define the AppStore as a revolution to you. I brought up Handango because I see it as a substitute or predecessor to the AppStore. The AppStore is an evolution to me. It's slightly better than Handango, sure, but this wasn't anything near looking at a wheel and building a car.

It sounds like you have not heard of Handango. That makes what I originally said about Apple being successful because of their aggressive advertising all the more true. I can go out on the street and stop 10 people - I'll be stunned if 4 of them haven't heard of Apple's AppStore; I'll also be stunned if 2 of them have heard of Handango.

I may have messed up the quotes situation a bit here, but the essence of each of our comments should be clear.

I had heard of Handango. But had to Google them to discover how big/small they are. The name appeals to people who think making one word up of three others is "a great name for a business". I make these people stand in the corner! Acronyms etc. are for quangos. They have no place in that part of people's vocabularies which includes the lexicon of successful company names. A point you agree with.

<'Authoritarian'/confidence>And trust me, no amount of marketing will elevate Handango to the same level as Apple's iTunes App Store even if Michael Jackson comes back to life as Jesus Christ and makes Bill Gates President!</'Authoritarian'/confidence>

Why? Because it's not fit for purpose from concept and business model, through purpose, message delivery and history to market position.

As you said earlier: "app stores have been around for a long time." True, they have. Therefore they had long enough to get it right. But they didn't. That wasn't entirely their own fault. Their business model was dependent on some old business theories that most players have failed to recognise don't work anymore. Evidence of this is everywhere in this story.

Also, contrast the number of apps developed and available for the Blackberry - the most ubiquitous PDA in history - until iPhone. Why was that? Why was there no incentive to develop apps for this successful of products? It's been around for TEN YEARS! No apps - no major trading opportunities - no need for stores!

Once again, Apple haven't spent a lot of money on advertising their App Store. They have spent a lot of time and effort figuring out how to solve delivery though. And as so rarely happens in these cases, they spent all that energy in the right place, at the right time. They spent it in the early years following Steve's return to Apple - before the release of iPod and iTunes, but after they saw how people liked to download music.

Apple channelled the delivery process and tied it into the activation and registration process. Yes, only Apple could have done that - because it was dependent upon a reliable personal computer-based app [iTunes] and then a retail outlet that Apple run - that just happens to have the same name!

I have one wish, that one day it will be possible to elect to return to moments in history and remote view them. I want to be in the room when they worked that one out. Why? Because on the floor were the parts of a horse cart [the music industry], some advanced forms of bicycle [Napster & Kasaar], and in the mind of the greatest entrepreneur of the 20th/21st Century... a racing car!

Think about canals in the age of steam railways in Britain. Think about steam railways in the age of road-going trucks in the years following WW2. And then see how Apple have just done the same thing to Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson... and Palm and RIMM.

The products - iPod and iPhone are in themselves marketing tools. They are the revenue generators and image enhancers, deal changers and creators of opportunities no other company could ever devise. Not because Apple is amazing, but because Apple simply put in a lot of effort and worked out the most important detail: the organic bit - that doesn't like a bewildering choice of models and colours and shiny plastic and a hundred different styles of tiny keypads...

But this business model only works when the whole package is in place all at the same time, at the right time, and when it's controlled by either tight agreements and convergent/dependent interests, and/or one company.
© Graham Ellison 2009

 

[sg.hill]

<'Authoritarian'/confidence>And trust me, no amount of marketing will elevate Handango to the same level as Apple's iTunes App Store even if Michael Jackson comes back to life as Jesus Christ and makes Bill Gates President!</'Authoritarian'/confidence>

You may well be right...but I doubt they ever set out to be what the AppStore is. It wasn't long before Apple began marketing their iPod Touch as a gaming platform. These ads are on bus stops all over here. AppStores until this point hadn't really been marketed this way...and why would they? Devices didn't provide anywhere near the gaming experience.

As you said earlier: "app stores have been around for a long time." True, they have. Therefore they had long enough to get it right. But they didn't. That wasn't entirely their own fault. Their business model was dependent on some old business theories that most players have failed to recognise don't work anymore. Evidence of this is everywhere in this story.

It's hard for me to get on board with this comparison. The circumstances of every era are different enough to determine success and failure of a given idea. EDGE wasn't prevalent in the era I used Handango, and most people I knew didn't have more than 56k in 2002. I don't think the iPhone or the AppStore would have succeeded then, but maybe tons of people would have wanted nothing more than a phone that played games without internet. What business theories, exactly? Specialization? Arranging their companies in functional silos?

Alcohol smuggling was a pretty good business model for the purple gang during prohibition, but it probably wouldn't make them much money now.

Also, contrast the number of apps developed and available for the Blackberry - the most ubiquitous PDA in history - until iPhone. Why was that? Why was there no incentive to develop apps for this successful of products? It's been around for TEN YEARS! No apps - no major trading opportunities - no need for stores!

Again I'd go back to games. I just loaded the AppStore to find something that isn't really surprising at all: 5/10 top paid apps are games; 2 of the top paid apps are listed under "entertainment" and top 6/10 free apps are in the games category (2 more in entertainment, 1 in social networking). Until the iPhone, I don't remember the BlackBerry being marketed to more than business users. Maybe that's my own mental block, but I doubt it. Now BlackBerry commercials mention Facebook, which didn't have widespread adoption before 2005.

It's also worth noting that the things I put on my iPhone first were preloaded on my BlackBerry: To-do list, password manager, voice recorder, google talk & AIM.

As a business productivity tool, it had things like DataViz's Docs To Go many years ago. Apps were there, but it was never marketed as a fun device. The time of the BlackBerry was much different than the time of the iPhone. The iPhone has undoubtedly changed the mobileweb and smartphone adoption more than any other tool. I just seem to think that has more to do the constant barrage of advertisements I see everywhere than you do. Maybe that's because you don't see the same amount of advertising?

This is not to say I think they're making lousy garbage and shoving it on the public. I think they're making some pretty good stuff and shoving it on the public. Ever see an episode of 30 Rock or Chuck when someone is on a cell phone? It's rarely anything but an iPhone. I can't say it's a bad strategy. I'm sure you know as well as I do, it gets better all the time, but there is not a shortage of people who need their hands held when it comes to what a device can do. I think the iPhone ads did that. The AppStore isn't perfect though; I've still had to show people how to use it.

I don't know what it's like where you live, but the only way I can make it through a day without seeing an Apple advertisement is to sit at home with the blinds drawn, my modem unplugged, and the TV off. Apple is very aggressive in advertising. Their continued aggressive advertising policy makes me think it's working. This is all I was saying originally. I'm stunned it prompted this discussion.

Once again, Apple haven't spent a lot of money on advertising their App Store. They have spent a lot of time and effort figuring out how to solve delivery though. And as so rarely happens in these cases, they spent all that energy in the right place, at the right time. They spent it in the early years following Steve's return to Apple - before the release of iPod and iTunes, but after they saw how people liked to download music.

I'd like to see numbers on AppStore-specific advertising. The premium slots on TV and areas here they advertise in are part of their success in marketing an upscale device...but that premium placement comes with a hefty price tag.

I have one wish, that one day it will be possible to elect to return to moments in history and remote view them. I want to be in the room when they worked that one out. Why? Because on the floor were the parts of a horse cart [the music industry], some advanced forms of bicycle [Napster & Kasaar], and in the mind of the greatest entrepreneur of the 20th/21st Century... a racing car!

I get the impression we define revolutionary in very different ways. What they did to me seems quite logical, and again just evolutionary. They wanted to build a better portable music player...so they did. Napster worked very well for what it did at the time, and not many people (other than audiophiles) like to buy CDs and spend time converting them to files. I feel like the conversation in the room wasn't far from "why can't we just take Napster and work with the RIAA?"

The most impressive thing about the iPod to me was not the first one...or the introduction of the mini, but the constant evolution. I'm definitely a fanboy, but to me Apple doesn't really even try to create new parts. They seem to be best at taking what already exists, making it better, and incorporating it into a package. I'm thinking of fingerworks here with the iPhone, Napster's success at the dismay of the music industry, BlackBerry's wild success as a combo PDA/phone.

Think about canals in the age of steam railways in Britain. Think about steam railways in the age of road-going trucks in the years following WW2. And then see how Apple have just done the same thing to Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson... and Palm and RIMM.

Palm's Pre seems to be doing okay and RIM isn't going away anytime soon. RIM has the distinct advantage of having companies heavily invested in their infrastructure and the best hardware keyboard. There is no perfect competition, only substitutes.

that doesn't like a bewildering choice of models and colours and shiny plastic and a hundred different styles of tiny keypads...

But my iPod Shuffle had a choice of colors...and so did the Nano I bought my mom. Sales of the iPhone are growing, sure, but how many of those people are switchers and how many are new adopters of smartphones? I couldn't find that data quickly, so it's somewhat rhetorical. The point is that if Apple is appealing to a different crowd, they aren't really taking customers away from RIM. If there are 100 million smartphone users who all use a BlackBerry, and the next day there are 200 million smartphone users and 50% use a BlackBerry...they weren't hurt nearly as bad as the numbers seem. They now just have a newfound market to appeal to. Also, not everyone likes the software keyboard. Head to a popular BlackBerry forum for slightly less-favorable impressions of the iPhone.

For what it's worth, I think this whole thing was started because I failed to mention something I thought was obvious: I'm a fan of Apple and have been for many years. I also use Windows on a daily basis though, and I'm a fan of Windows 7; even while my copy of Snow Leopard is on order. I loved my iPhone and iPhone 3G...but I love my cheaper BlackBerry a little more. One day I just realized I wasn't using the things the iPhone was best at: games, media, YouTube. The third-party Apps I used most were Google's. For that last reason, I tend to think the open-source Android is going to ultimately be the smartphone leader, and my next phone may well be running Android.

 

[G58]

Recession = good for business

I replied to your message days ago, but for some reason it got bounced!! Maybe I omitted a title??

How does it go? Get back into the swing of things by blogging about getting back into the swing of things...

Anyway, thank you for the welcome back DMann. It's good to be jousting here again, and finding some familiar enlightened faces.

And what subject matter we have to play with!! And those results...

As I get older, I find the number of things I like and trust are becoming more and more clearly defined. I no longer wonder if a Blackberry is an option. Nokia, I'm dropping like it's hot. It's nice getting it right isn't it?

And all the predictions I was [and others were] being called a fanboy for making, and attracting a lot of flack over, just a few short months ago, are all coming true.

Recessions sure sort out the men from the boys don't they?

This so vividly and coherently explains why Microsoft, in contrast, a company which admittedly peddles products which are "good enough," found the need to wedge their half baked products into the world via coercive OEM deals, anti-competitive and illegal monopolistic activities. Their "me too" agenda makes them seem all the more pathetic, believing that merely following the footsteps of a successful company, sans the quality and high standards of said company's products, will grant them similar success. People do eventually recognize a difference, and many opt for quality over second rate. Anyway, great to have you back G58!

 

[DMann]

I replied to your message days ago, but for some reason it got bounced!! Maybe I omitted a title??

How does it go? Get back into the swing of things by blogging about getting back into the swing of things...

Anyway, thank you for the welcome back DMann. It's good to be jousting here again, and finding some familiar enlightened faces.

And what subject matter we have to play with!! And those results...

As I get older, I find the number of things I like and trust are becoming more and more clearly defined. I no longer wonder if a Blackberry is an option. Nokia, I'm dropping like it's hot. It's nice getting it right isn't it?

And all the predictions I was [and others were] being called a fanboy for making, and attracting a lot of flack over, just a few short months ago, are all coming true.

Recessions sure sort out the men from the boys don't they?

Things are going well G, thank you! As you have so eloquently stated, those results are the outcome and virtue of producing great products, well integrated packages and well implemented features, having all components in place at the same time, the right time, and having the ability to oversee their distribution to the masses, in a seamless and elegant fashion. This is neither due to luck nor fortuitous mischance - it is artistry, combined with insight, ingenuity, and refinement, put into effect by great minds who hold the user experience in deep regard. This is a good thing!