averyblund said:
I think I have pointed out as definitivly as is possible based on the data that Symbian (and WinMo) users really don't utilize their headsets to the fullest. The metric I used is web browsing, which is a good demonstration as to whether an owner is a "power user". If you consider that Andoroid has the same share as Symbian on 1 phone released 6 months ago I think the correlation is pretty clear. iPhone/Android users are mostly "power users", most other OS's have not figured out how to provide an experience to the user that compells them to take advantage of their hardware. That should be an embarassement to the players who have been in the market for more than a decade, and yet are getting objectively crushed when it comes to actual software ecosystems. If people don't use their (free) browser their are more than likely not going to shell out money for a game or app. The Symbian Appstore is a great idea, but they are late to the game. Everybody has one or has announced it, and in so many markets the first mover is the one to benefit most. The unified architecture (CPU, GPU, resolution, ect) also makes Apple attractive because the code doesn't need any tweaking to be used on any of the headsets or iPods. Having many of the same/similar API's a major desktop OS also means developers come in with more pre-existing knowledge, documentation and tools. |
Regarding all the different App Stores that keep popping up, and considering the first mover advantage (though some claim such a thing does not exist), the real competition between the manufacturers is not so much on who has the most downloads, it is a competition to get the most developer support for your platform. In 8 months Apple has gotten more developers onboard than Windows Mobile or Symbian have in years. Currently, Apple has 50 000 paid developer members, and who knows how many more have downloaded the SDK. Nokia, MS, Palm and RIM have an uphill battle if they aim to garner more developer support than Apple.
As you point out, Apple has a lot of things going for it, and IMO it is very clear they have planned a long term strategy to leverage everything they have. Existing OS X developers have very little trouble developing for the iPhone OS, the development environment is polished and the documentation is quite probably the best I've come across. But the real beauty lies in what comes next: the iPhone developers learn objective-C and Cocoa frameworks, and a portion of them will start doing apps for the desktop as well. I'm pretty much dead certain that there is going to be an intermediary step along that migration path, and that's going to be some kind of multi-touch tablet using the iPhone OS. And it will use the App Store for application distribution.
At least that's how I would do it if I was running things :)
