Quimondo

When 1 becomes N

There's an interesting article today in InfoWorld that talks about the game of chicken that Apple and Palm are  currently playing with each other regarding iTunes Syncronization.

This is not a battle to be taken lightly.  Apple is now a large enough player to deal with the same issues that IBM did in the 70s/80s and Microsoft did in the 90's:  When you become such a dominent player in an industry, you will ultimately be asked to play nice with others or you will be forced to. (Can you say "Consent Decree"? )

Apple's next move is critical. If it allows Palm to 'get away' with this, it is inviting a host of other companies to follow suit. (or maybe file suit?) If it prevents Palm now, it will likely get away with it as everyone fully expects Apple to protect it's IP.  If not, it only prolongs the moment when an inevitable bug (whether intentional or not) gets introduced somewhere down the line that breaks Pre's ability to sync.  The conspiracy theorists will be all over this in a minute and Apple will be forever forced to do damage control.

I was at IBM in the days when all APIs were required to be either published publically or found in an OEM document available by request. Apple's system works as well as it does because they keep their APIs so close to the vest.  It will be interesting to watch the cultural affect this would have if Apple is forced to open up this closed system.

1984 + 25 Years.... What's changed?

Here it is 2009, 25 years after Apple's groundbreaking 1984 Ad campaign that sought to break us out of the status quo and to (borrowing from the later iPod campaign) - Think Different.   Well, I am sitting at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference and I am having an interesting time reconciling this message.  There are over 5000 developers attending this sold-out conference and I can't get the image out of my head that we are all sitting in a dark auditorium with our trusty silver finish MacBook Pros open and soaking up everything flowing from the lips of the Body Apple up on stage.  It's actually kinda freaky.

It's also interesting to watch the commercials on TV with' PC' battling 'Mac' on the values of  "choice" vs "we know what's right for you". As someone who has lived through the dizzying diversity of PC and Mobile platforms, there is a peace in knowing you only have to understand one platform to do your work.  But what have we given up?

So... you want to be number one? Be quick, you have about 30 days.

Reviewing the apps in the iPhone AppStore that have reached Top of Category between 11/1/2008 and 6/1/2009 shows that the number of days from launch of the application to the day it first reached the top slot was most common to be one week, and most likely within 30 days of it's inital release. Outside that, it is decidely unlikely that it will ever be able to get enough exposure to reach the top slot.  These numbers point directly to the issues of discoverablilty, as the first week is where you may show up in "what's new" or be on the first page or two of an iTunes browse of category.  Once a user has to start searching for your application, you may not achieve enough critical mass to make it to the top. That said, there is a long enough tail to show that there are still some applications that have used external marketing or word of mouth to beat the odds.

 

How long can you be number one?

In looking at the applications that have reached the coveted position of being top in their category on the iPhone AppStore, there appears to be three major groupings.  The main bulk of these applications  seem to have reigned supreme between 1 and 16 days.  There is another set that have managed to make it to upwards of 30 days at the top. Lastly, there are a handful of apps that have real legs - basically owning their category for half or even all the days in the data collected.

Congratulations to those that have made it to the top.  The big question is now is what can one do to retain the position with this much competition?

Applications continue to disappear from iTunes

Apple has once again limited the number of applications that are shown when one browses the category sections of iTunes.  Where Apple had initially capped this number at 3500 in February, they have now reduced the number to 2500.   That means in one fell swoop, 7000 applications are no longer visible in the top 7 high volume categories like Games, Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Utilities.

One has to wonder how a new application is discovered by a customer, as many applications never get shown in the 'What's new' section when they are initially launched on the AppStore.

Many developers are turning to external marketing using YouTube videos, Facebook applications and adverstising buys to let people know about their apps. It would be helpful if Apple did not impose this arbitrary barrier to discovery.

iPhone App Pricing - "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

As the number of applications increases each day, (now over 30000 unique apps) the price charged for those applications remains fairly consistent. Many might think that free apps rule, but the 99 cent app is actually king of the hill. 

 

 75% of all apps in the AppStore are priced under $2, and the 99 cent app has increased its percentage share by over 5% in the last couple of months.  The percentage of free apps has stayed fairly constant at about just over 20%. It's interesting to note that greater than 90% of all the apps on the AppStore cost less than $5, with the $9.99 band representing the set of "premium" apps that represent the bulk of what's left.

Microsoft Acknowledges iPhone

Many premier internet sites inspect the User Agent of an incoming request to see if the content is destined for an iPhone. Those that do this have given users a much cleaner and enjoyable experience on the device. Those that do this incorrectly have often left users frustrated and unsatisfied

Users of Microsoft's MSN Mail or Hotmail have recently been in the frustrated and unsatisfied camp. In fact, the user experience has degraded over the last year, where text and headers have been shortened to the point of being unusable. As you can see in the left picture, message titles and sender info used only 10 characters on the screen.

Microsoft has finally fixed this by updating their Mobile Live Mail content with iPhone specific rendering, making it much easier to see who is sending you mail and what the subject is.  (You can see this updated look on the right side of the photo.) Individual emails are now rendered properly for the screen as well.

Thank you, Microsoft, for finally updating your mail site.  Now, if you could please make it so I can scan more than 10 email entries at a time....

Number of AppStore vendors approaching the 10,000 mark

When Apple unveiled the AppStore in July 2008, they claimed that 250,000 people had downloaded the iPhone SDK,  that 25,000 had applied to sell on the AppStore and 2000 had initially been admitted into the program.  Since the launch of the AppStore, the number of developers has been rising consistently each day, and the number of unique vendors on any given day will soon reach 10,000.

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AppStore Limits Discoverability - iTunes' Magic Number is 3500

At turn of the year, after a scheduled Holiday break period,  the number of applications available in some of most popular iPhone categories suddenly shot skyward.  The Entertainment category was most affected, reaching almost 4900 applications by mid January.  At that time, a decision seemed to have been made to limit the number of applications visible using the category browse capability of the desktop iTunes, and by Valentine's Day three categories (Entertainment, Games(All) and Utilities) were being limited to 3500 applications retrieved.  At the time of this writing, Books, Education, Lifestyle, and Reference have since reached this plateau.

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It is the hope of every developer to get their application seen and available to the public.  We know that an iPhone user is not going to be scrolling through 140 screens of apps (assuming 25 per screen) looking for new applications. Without removing this boundary, the only other way to find an application in iTunes would be to search on the right keyword using the search facility.