The iTunes app store needs no introduction from me. It has been a phenomenal success and has changed the way millions of people view what is possible with their mobile phones. With near 100,000 apps already online and with the likelihood of the numbers growing faster as time progresses, iPhone users will soon be able to purchase whatever they like for their phone for a minimal price.
How curious that Windows Mobile and Symbian also have thousands of titles available and that few people still seem to be aware. Windows Mobile in particular has a strong selection of apps which easily rival the iPhone in terms of quality, and in some cases surpass what is possible because of the tweakable nature of the OS. Windows Marketplace has gotten off to a very slow start and at the last count only a couple of hundred titles had been loaded up. With 20,000 titles out there this is a strange situation. Ovi is also not doing as well as Nokia would have liked, but the quality of most of the titles doesn’t help there. Meanwhile RIM created App World which also suffers from a lack of quality and you can still get many more titles from the likes of mobihand, and often with discounts attached.
I do not think it is possible for Nokia or RIM to compete with Apple in this space because the number and quality of titles available makes it very difficult, but Microsoft should be doing much better. I would argue that the Windows Mobile catalogue, apart from gaming, is stronger than the iPhones and that more flexibility is available, but Microsoft hasn’t quite grasped the potential here. Lots of advertising is in place with the mobile network providers and the shops such as Carphone Warehouse which often detail the Marketplace as a feature of Windows Mobile phones, but the apps are simply not there yet. Microsoft may be able to turn this around, but it could fall foul of the same issue Palm has. As every new app is added to the Windows Mobile and webOS catalogues ten are added to the app store and the gap is set to grow even larger.
It is not all about software, but Apple has one hell of an advantage at the moment and the others need to work hard and more importantly work a lot quicker to get a look in.
“Windows Marketplace has gotten off to a very slow start and at the last count only a couple of hundred titles had been loaded up. With 20,000 titles out there this is a strange situation.”
Not when you see, as a developer, how badly the marketplace is run..