The Rise of the App Store

The rise and fall of a tech or trend is sometimes largely a matter of
terminology; and at other times, of how the trend is viewed-or measured.

The dot com boom was all about Eyeballs. The “eyeballs promise” allowed both
huge online companies like AOL as well as startups with flaky business models to
pick up big valuations and funds. Then came the bust. And then, half a decade
later, the rise of the Community (or the Network). Both measured online
users-just a bit differently.

Then there was the ASP hype and promise-application service providers that
would deliver everything online, from pay-as-you-go sliced bread to photo
services. The hype faded. Today, the same idea is re-born as SaaS: software as a
service. The Internet is old hat: its new avatar is the Cloud.

The App Store is in a similar position.

For years, we've had sites where Internet users could download software:
download.com, filez.com, and the like. In fact, before the Internet, we had
'bulletin boards' such as PCQ Online where you could dial in, and, among other
things, download lots of files-trial software, freeware, games, and other
resources.

Then came CD ROMs and the Internet, and you could get gigabytes of software
with each issue of a magazine like PCQuest (we were early in the game-1995), or
download it via a slow Internet connection that has gradually speeded up in the
last five years. But they weren't really branded, even with a generic label,
they weren't a business model, they weren't backed by major tech vendors.

Then came the mobile phone, which rapidly evolved into an application
platform.

And the iPhone was born, and, last year, its App Store. That's a website
where you could download apps, both free and paid for. Apple proved that selling
mobile applications for smartphones could be big business.

Quick, said the copycat app stores, each backed by a major vendor. Nokia's
Ovi Store. Google's Android Market. The BlackBerry App World. App stores from
Microsoft, LG Electronics, and others.

Apple is way ahead of the pack, with over 140,000 apps, 1.5 billion downloads,
and 100,000 developers. The others are struggling to catch up. Apple has the
edge, one, because of its iPhone, which is a great app platform, and two,
because of its iTunes e-commerce service.

At Barcelona's annual GSM Mobile World Congress last month, there was a lot
of debate on app stores. Telcos agreed that they'd want to offer access to
multiple app stores-with some cut of the action. Thankfully, not all wireless
operators are thinking of setting up their own app stores, as Airtel did last
month (pointless, especially when you don't control devices and apps as tightly
as the US operators do), and Reliance is expected to follow suit. Most global
operators want to set up m-portals, which would allow access to these
stores-like owning a shopping mall, and not running each shop.

The trend of mushrooming app stores does mean a fragmented market, with
developers having to create a dozen different versions of the same apps. It also
means a spectrum of choice for mobile users, and rising data usage for telcos.
And it suggests that we're rapidly moving forward to the future of the
mobile--as a converged, universal, personal application terminal running a
spectrum of productivity and entertainment apps.

Prasanto K Roy

pkr@cybermedia.co.in

is Chief Editor of CyberMedia's ICT Publications