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Microsoft, Symbian and Others Announce 'App Stores'

mogzieee said:
This just annoys me as none of these companies will make an app store with so much dominance as Apple has currently.
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?????

Apples App store is dominant in the industry? Doesnt the iphone hold less than 1% total cellphone market share and less than 10% of smartphone market share?

How is Apple dominating the industry? Their store is only available on one phone.

Now that doesnt mean they didnt do a good job of creating and organizing it, but they are in no way shape or form "dominating" the industry.

Apple has always done one thing right: they hire designers. People that understand that the user shouldnt have to think about what they are doing. Prior to the iPhone, this was a nonexistent experience for me on a phone. If these companies learn just that, they will be successful.... but that doesnt mean they will affect Apples sales at all.
 
I remember 4-5 years back maybe longer. I use to have a windows mobile phone
And there was an app store app it had like 30k apps. Don’t remember the name
Because shortly afterwards i made the switch to blackberry. But my point is
Apple like everything else was not the first to "innovate" apple is excellent @ deceiving the public into believing they’re the ones who invented something when in reality they just steal the idea market the hell out of it and slap gloss all over it. The appstore while great is GARBAGE. Have you seen the amount of trash in it? What is the ratio 20k apps 10 good ones and 19990 apps not even worth wasting bandwidth on?
I for one welcome anything new to the table that will push a company’s boundaries further out into the innovation dpt to stay ahead of the pack. Why people would be upset @ the fact that other companies are following apples lead and taking a bite of the pie is beyond me. THE MORE THEY BATTLE FOR OUR MONEY THE BETTER THE PRODUCT GETS.
And please stop defending apple and claiming it is innovative. If apple were the innovative company and not the I COPY AND BLIND YOU INTO THINKING I DID IT FIRST company. Then an iphone with a HD screen like the Samsung omniaHD OR THE HTCHD would have been out ahead of the aforementioned phones already.
I’ll say it again apple is EXCELLENT @ MARKETING & simplifying interfaces. 80% copy-20% innovation. Now flame on me as if I just insulted your mother.
 
garybUK said:
What's the use in pointing out features of rivals when you get shot down.
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Yes, you are right. The guy commenting on someone giving you a rebuttal is of course not understanding the deeper issue.

Which is: Why no one can post the truth without some fanboy disagreeing to that truth, or going completely to left field with another comment.

We say Pre, fanboys say it sucks and iPhone was first at everything

We give proof and reasons for it not being that way, fanboys say MacOSX ROCKS!!!11!!!!

Jayomat said:
plus, why do the apple fanboys even bother? Stick with apple appstore or whatever. The Nokia guys will do the same. Coexistance is the key. live and let live. some people seem to have no life at all :D
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I don't think it's a non-coexistence issue at all. It's more of an "I have to justify this product that someone is attacking issue." It's one thing to bash, like most iPhone junkies do with everything that's not an iPhone, and another to post your disapproval of something based on opinions supported by facts.

Hate the iPhone because it's screen cracks to easily, sure. Don't hate it because you don't want to leave Verizon and there's no CDMA version.

Conversely hate the Pre because it's on Sprint's network and you hate Sprint, don't hate it because it's OS is touted as being far better than the iPhone OS.

studlybw said:
I might be completely off base but am I the only one who just found buying apps so easy that it just came natural. I had an iTunes store account already, I had downloaded music over many years, and it's just plain seamless to me.

I don't think I would have bought apps on another phone if it weren't so easy. I'm not willing to start another account for just about anything. I buy an app, it's taken from my credit card or my account credit that somebody gave me as a gift.
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You are off base a little. The fact remains that it's been done widely before the App Store. Just as simple too. I remember the first Palm OS app I bought was done that same way. No registration or anything. Just punched my info in and downloaded it. Then wirelessly synced my Palm and had a fully functioning very stable app.

The part that the non iphone junkies are arguing and trying to get through the junkies' heads is that the App Store wasn't first although it's a great service. SO, don't bash other for making their own like they are copying Apple.

Palm announced the Pre, iPhone junkies bashed it like Apple was the first to invent the smartphone and the features of a smartphone. Even went as far as saying the missing features of the iPhone were useless and no one used them anyway. That is the problem I see with junkies, they never let up and pull all stops to convince others to think their way and flame anyone that doesn't. Like a religious fanatic.
 
thecheda said:
android market....yay!
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i'm looking forward to the blackberry apps store. having my blackberry leash sucks so i might as well go all out and have apps on it that increase productivity. yah for my job in this crappy economy!

fyi. how is this news a "negative" thing? honestly, apple fans b*tch and moan about microsoft and yet want apple to be the same domineering goliath who inhibits competition.
 
Just like the success of the touch screen on phones, everybody is looking for their cut of customers to get a piece of the action, Apple again looks like the company everybody is trailing behind (except blackberry).
 
enigmaverse said:
?????

Apples App store is dominant in the industry? Doesnt the iphone hold less than 1% total cellphone market share and less than 10% of smartphone market share?

How is Apple dominating the industry? Their store is only available on one phone.

Now that doesnt mean they didnt do a good job of creating and organizing it, but they are in no way shape or form "dominating" the industry.

Apple has always done one thing right: they hire designers. People that understand that the user shouldnt have to think about what they are doing. Prior to the iPhone, this was a nonexistent experience for me on a phone. If these companies learn just that, they will be successful.... but that doesnt mean they will affect Apples sales at all.
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How is Apple dominating the app store industry? Handango is (according to themselves) the leading global provider of smartphone apps. The have over 140,000 apps. An impressive number, but how many for any one platform?

Total downloads conducted by Handango in its 7+ year history: 100 million
http://corp.handango.com/PressRelease.jsp?siteId=1&CKey=1_PRESSRELEASE_PR011609

Total downloads from Apple's app store in 6 months: 500 million
 
Geenz said:
I love how some of the responses to this article involves praise for apple "being first" with their App Store, with other players in the mobile phone OS market copying them. Especially when there's been App Store-like offerings for various mobile devices that pre-date the App Store in a mobile form. Sure they may not be first party methods, but they exist none the less.
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The point of this article is that although there has been a "Palm store" for a few years now, app stores weren't ALL THE RAGE until Apple had runaway success with theirs. Remember flip phones? Now the cellular handset market is completely choked by a plethora of touch-screen phones, which didn't appear until, yeah, the iPhone showed up and started kicking ass. :D
 
How many of these app stores will be mac friendly I wonder. If they are web-based they lose the integration of iTunes, if they are windows-based they exclude mac users. Either way, Apple still hold an advantage because they will always have the mac support as a slight edge, which means the other stores will have to try that tiny bit harder to get everything right, as far as I am concerned.

And yes, others have had app stores... like others had MP3 players before the iPod. Apple might not be first, but they are arguably the first to do it right.

I voted negative because it all seems a bit reactive to Apple. Competition is good, but innovation is better, and it'd be nice to see these companies doing something more different to compete, rather than competing by doing the same thing.
 
BaldiMac said:
Total downloads conducted by Handango in its 7+ year history: 100 million
http://corp.handango.com/PressRelease.jsp?siteId=1&CKey=1_PRESSRELEASE_PR011609

Total downloads from Apple's app store in 6 months: 500 million
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Handango's sales are often $10-20 per app. We don't know how many Apple store downloads were free.

Sehnsucht said:
The point of this article is that although there has been a "Palm store" for a few years now, app stores weren't ALL THE RAGE until Apple had runaway success with theirs.
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There's no doubt that other manufacturers, who used to let third parties make all the money, are now motivated in part by the same profit-taking control that Apple has demonstrated. Fortunately, the other makers aren't locking people to their own stores (yet).
 
Lurch_Mojoff said:
GPS and AGPS, even the one in the iPhone, don't need data connection (although AGPS needs access to the mobile network for the "assisted" part). Downloading an app or a song, even from Nokia's magical store, does however need data connection.
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AGPS doesn't need a data connection. The assisted part is just to make the GPS faster, it is not necessary. It's not like the iPhone has a crippled GPS chip.
 
Porco said:
How many of these app stores will be mac friendly I wonder. If they are web-based they lose the integration of iTunes, if they are windows-based they exclude mac users. Either way, Apple still hold an advantage because they will always have the mac support as a slight edge, which means the other stores will have to try that tiny bit harder to get everything right, as far as I am concerned.

And yes, others have had app stores... like others had MP3 players before the iPod. Apple might not be first, but they are arguably the first to do it right.

I voted negative because it all seems a bit reactive to Apple. Competition is good, but innovation is better, and it'd be nice to see these companies doing something more different to compete, rather than competing by doing the same thing.
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This is that fanboy left field stuff I was talking about.

Not that you aren't correct, but why would an app store have to be Mac friendly and be like iTunes. That statement goes hand in hand with what I say about non-iPhone reviews.

Stop trying to take something different, shove it into the Apple box, compare it to an Apple product in every way then when it fails to do so (since it wasn't meant to be that way to begin with) speak on how it doesn't do this and that.

And of course, the Apple did it right! Apple innovated! banter that always finds it way at the end.

By the way, Palm is doing something different to compete, as is Samsung with their new solar cell phone. But I bet they won't get much play because they don't sync with iTunes.
 
millar876 said:
Apple, the trendsetters yet again. anyone remember the WWDC banner a couple of years back, "Redmond - Start your photocopiers" seems a bit like that again
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Yea. Trendsetting at it's best...considering Apple just stole the idea from the community based Installer.app for jailbroken phones.
 
I know nothing about Windows Mobile, so forgive me if this is well know ... but is WM as vulnerable to virus and worm attacks as full blown Windows? If so I assume Norton and Kaspersky et al have mobile versions ..?
 
Digital Skunk said:
This is that fanboy left field stuff I was talking about.
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Calling people fanboys doesn't really help your argument.

Not that you aren't correct, but why would an app store have to be Mac friendly and be like iTunes. That statement goes hand in hand with what I say about non-iPhone reviews.
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Why would a person on a MacRumors forum care if an app store is Mac friendly? :rolleyes: I can understand how it would be a primary concern in this neighborhood.

The poster that you quoted did not say that the other app stores should be more like iTunes. They said that a purely web-based application would lose the integration that iTunes has. Less integrated generally means more steps.
 
Digitalclips said:
Didn't they just expand their existing iTunes model to include apps?
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No. They saw how successful the Installer.app distribution model was and copied it. (Or, according to some here, collaborated with the developers of Installer.app to create their own 'App Store') Either way, the idea was not unique and was definitely not an in-house Apple creation.
 
garybUK said:
Thing is.... Ovi from Nokia is going to absolutely BLOW apple's mediocre offering out of the water... why?

It has Music, Games AND App's in one store, it's unified why have a iTunes store and a App store, it's also Location aware.... imagine getting off the plane and being able to buy a language learning mp3 and a travel guide right on your Nokia! :) Also Nokia has a HUGE (numbers Apple could only dream of) installed base and this is going to be available on new and old smart/dumb handsets.

Can't wait to get my N97 :D
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Wow, getting of the plane, paying like $100 in data roaming for a lanquage mp3 and a silly map.

Can't wait...
 
All these stores are lame. I'd rather visit the developers own site and pay them directly and download the app. Looks like things are becoming more closed which is a bad thing.
 
mave1969 said:
I've never bought music and applications in the same transaction. They are different mediums and therefore require different grouping and navigation paradigms. Please explain what benefit this combination would bring other than to serve your already weak argument.
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My reaction exactly. My iPhone is a business deduction. I don't fill it with music from iTunes, I fill it with training videos/audios and my recorded audios using tools like MPEG streamclip, audio hijack, and audacity.
When I want to listen to music I use Pandora.

I don't want to have to plow through irrelevant stuff like Beyonce or Brittany when I am browsing applications.

-----
and what's the point of acting like a Nokia fanboy on a Mac site?
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