iTunes App Store Surpasses 15 Billion Downloads

The iTunes App Store had only 500 applications when it launched in 2008, now it has over half a million applications if you count iPad's. The 15-billion download number is staggering. Talk about a Long Tail! The App Store is reaching this milestone only one month after the iTunes Music Store reached the same number (iTunes Music Store launched in 2003, 5 years before the App Store).

I have been a strong supporter of a vibrant developer community to establish a platform, this is one of the best illustrations we've ever seen so far.

Google's Android Market is still playing catch up (Apple must be feeling them breathing over their neck though), but if you add their numbers, this truly is an incredible growth and remarkable achievement.

In-house 'app stores' ease tablet-management woes

Excellent article from ComputerWorld about the challenges of managing BringYourOwnDevice (BYOD) in the enterprise. The consumerization of IT and the proliferation of new devices like the ipad are changing the face of application management within the enterprise. The article highlights the three approaches to application deployment:

• Use internal app store to control delivery and update of employee LOB apps
• Use mixed model to allow employees to use externally developed apps
• Total app freedom

Each enterprise will have different requirements to choose one of the above strategies. The key is to choose an infrastructure and back-end integration that will allow the transition from one to the other based on new requirements.

Disruption at work: Apple's iPad

Apple has done it again. The Cupertino guys have, one more time, dramatically changed how people consume digital content with their new iPad device. This is on the same scale as the iPod and iPhone introduction. Digital content streaming is going to explode with the adoption of the iPad. The size, the weight, the resolution and the price make it the perfect device to use in the house. I don't like to look too far back, but Apple is superbly executing on their strategy as discussed in an early 2006 post. So who should be concerned with the new iPad?

• Amazon. It's going to take a lot of work for the Kindle to get any significant traction unless there is a big change in design and business model.
  


• Carriers. AT&T gets a 3GSM model to increase its subscriber base in an environment where ARPU is declining. Verizon and Sprint must be worried and so should be other carriers worldwide.
  


• Print Media. It's going to be very interesting to watch how media companies such as newspapers are going to react to the new device. Why do you want to pay for print newspapers/magazines ever again? I'd better monitor newspapers sales and distribution from now on.
  


• Device manufacturers (Nokia, RIM, Samsung, LG). Apple is all over the house now, they have so many touch points with the consumer that the barriers to entry will be too high for you and you may become irrelevant quickly.
  


• Google. This is a double-edged sword. Apple was first to market but a lot of the device manufacturers may flock to Google to adopt Android. This looks very much like the open vs closed war that we saw before.

All these companies are vying for a dominant position around the network triangle. Apple and Google are appearing as the leaders to control the overall user experience.

Context-aware technology

I just read an excellent special report on Business Week about context-aware computing. You can read most of the report here. Context-aware software tracks a person's location, interests, buying habits and other information. Smartphones are the perfect device to collect and aggregate that kind of information.
Early 2000, Location Based Services (LBS) already promised unimaginable smart services to serve coupon to shoppers walking by a store and other innovative applications. Handheld location was determined by triangulation based on signal strength from each base station. That architecture never delivered. Several reasons to this failure: hype cycle, precision was not good, wireless service providers controlled the information and wanted their own applications to use that data (not external applications). It is my opinion that the first incarnation of presence services went the same way for the exact same reasons.
Fast-forward nearly 10 years and we have a completely different environment. Apple (and its developers/partners), and Google are in total control of the user experience. Multiple applications are able to use location information to provide advanced services to the users. Yelp provides a unique example of combined use of location and camera with the Monocle feature (augmented reality).

The more source of data you can integrate (social media, CRM), the more phone features you can leverage (camera, accelerometer), the best experience you can provide and the more information about the user you get to track. Good and bad. Best way to enable this is to open up the phone platform (Android, iOS, RIM, Windows) to as many developers as possible. Java was a great example of a rapid and pervasive adoption.

iPhone 3G and App Store: The Long Tail

Much has been written about the new iPhone 3G released by Apple last week. While it is a great device, attention should be paid to the release of the App Store. The App Store can be installed through an iTune update, and allows you to buy and install applications on your new iPhone. This is a major achievement for Apple and more importantly for the developer community. I wrote about such an environment back in 2006: "harness the millions of developers to work on creating value for your network, bring the new media content to your subscribers' handsets".

I'm very curious to see the number of applications (good and bad) that will be made available to the public. I won't try to forecast that number but it will be another order of magnitude to what carriers could bring to market. I believe we will see a true example of The Long Tail where consumers will be offered a large (huge) selection of applications at a very low price.

Apple reinvents the phone

People have lined up in front of Apple stores all around the country to get their hands on Apple's new device, the iPhone. There are many things that make the iPhone a truly innovative device and much has been written about it already. I'm really interested in seeing how Apple can work with the developer community to create new applications for the iPhone. This has the potential to create a significant ecosystem and get innovative applications quickly. What Apple has been able to achieve with the iPhone is no small feat. It is incredibly hard to line up gorgeous design, cutting edge hardware, and flawless software together. Apple has been able to achieve this because they control all the elements. It is even harder when you only control software for instance.

Apple is moving in the same direction as Google to better control the user experience.
At the same time RIM, the smart phone leader, hasn't come up with anything close to this kind of innovation. A blackberry phone with a simple messaging application is going to look very bad very quickly compared to an iPhone. RIM and Nokia should be afraid, very afraid of this new product.