NYTimes on the App Store, Palm 19
Apple has unquestionably changed the mobile computing landscape over the last two years in several regards, with one of the major ones being a shift in the way applications are distributed and consumed. Our sister site The iPhone Blog points us to a recent article run by the New York Times, "Apple's Game Changer, Downloading Now" about the App Store's epic growth, and some of the trials and tribulations along the way.
The App Store does a lot of things right, and Apple strongly believes that its way is the best way going forward when it comes to application distribution on mobile devices. There are some, including Palm, who believe that despite the App Store's massive success, there's still some room for improvement in key areas, and even that other distribution models are worth pursuing.
The article points to the experience of a few developers who have had issues with Apple, including one company that had waited over 300 days since their initial contact. The process surrounding application approval, some say, is often opaque and the developer experience is often inconsistent. Is having over 100,000 applications in a storefront without any sort of a predictable promotion model really something that should be celebrated?
Palm doesn't think so. From the article:
“Two years ago, the iPhone blew away expectations for what mobile devices are capable of. And mobile devices and applications are the future of the computing industry,” says Ben Galbraith, co-director of Palm’s developer relations team. “But the market is becoming saturated with a large volume of applications. When you’re number 50,000 out of 200,000, how do you survive?”
The Times article doesn't go into much depth about how Apple's competitors including RIM, Microsoft and Google plan to take advantage of the ecosystem opportunities that have been created by the Cupertino based company in the near term. As far as Palm is concerned, the article very vaguely details the company plans to distribute applications when the program comes out of beta later this month.
Palm has detailed its impending app distribution model in the past, but here's a quick recap. Palm, like Apple, very much believes that a tightly controlled on-device application catalog is of crucial importance. Palm's approach, though, is going to differ in a few significant ways: it's going to charge a $50 per application fee to create a friction point in an attempt to cut down on the "app spam" phenomena, will offer a more "transparent" review process, and is going to offer concrete and predictable ways for developers to promote their wares in Palm's virtual store.
The second method can be described as "Android-esque", where a user simply uploads a self-certified application to Palm. There's no review process; a developer sends their application up to Palm, get a URL back, and can then distribute their application to its users by direct links or as part of a feed.
Will these steps help Palm to alleviate some of the issues that plague the App Store? Can Palm successfully utilize the web as a distribution model? I think Palm is on track to accomplish both of these - it's great to see them embracing both models, being both the gatekeeper and the enabler. The true test will be over the next six months, after the App Catalog comes out of beta later this month. The thing is, you can have the best app store on the market, but it won't matter if nobody wants to sell their software in it.
19 Comments
I've definitely been impressed with Palm's new business model and the rate of speed they've been advancing. As long as they continue to learn from other's mistakes as well as their's I really think they have a fighting chance...then again I've stuck behind the Palm brand for more than 6 years since my first Palm Pilot...so I'll admit I'm a bit biased lol but I am really excited where it all seems to be heading!!
I agree
They need a low level SDK fast. And hopefully GPU access. I mean, everybody else and their grandma has things like Shazam - one of the coolest apps on the planet, by the way, but without mic API it's no dice on Palm. Plus, they need to open up their sync / allow others to sync tasks, since their task management solution is lacking and something like Pocket Informant and / or other crop of task managers would go a long way to making the Pre more appealing.
That NY times article made it seem like apple invented digital distribution.
They didn't???
;-)
For most people they might as well have.
I still get strange looks when I show that my WebOS or WinMo phone can actually DO stuff. Heck, I even had to teach some people how to get programs on their WinMo phones. The fact that they were surprised after having the phone for a year or more shows how much Apple actually HAS revolutionized that portion of the market. Even my new pupils wouldn't go all over the nets to find new and exciting programs for their phones.
Now it's time to refine the process and get some real advancement going.
nb
I dont understand how people think its a new thing. I could download games directly to my telus Motorola razor way before the iphone existed. It was just as easy as well, go to games, get new, select the one you want, download, and then you get billed on your mobile bill. Valve has has digital distro for games for years before the iphone. I think even Nintendo and Microsoft had app stores before apple (Virtual Console and Xbox live arcade). So I really dont get the mentality that apple invited it and revolutionized the world.
It's my feeling that Apple doesn't invent anything. They are simply very good at "re-invention" or taking existing technology, dumbing it down for the general public, then marketing it as "new and innovative". They get away with this because they have captured the hearts of the non-geek, general population of consumers with the iPod brand and all it's incarnations.
In this light(and I am by no means an Apple fan)Apple can do no wrong in the eyes of general consumers and the non-technical media.
Well said!
Most people seem to think apple invented the digital music player with the iPod.
More than anything else, Apple excels at marketing and product design. Whatever the quality of the products, you can be sure of two things... that they always look very slick and are the most expensive on the market.
I agree with you, but it's not that they invented it. It's that they made it more accessible to consumers AND developers.
Your example means that the developer would have to work with motorola or whatever cell company you had to get listed in their store. I had that on an old flip Sanyo, but it wasn't exactly compelling to use.
Nintendo and Microsoft had App stores, so did Handango,Handmark and the like, but Apple made it more useful to the masses.
People also swear that Apple invented the MP3 player. We know that isn't true, but to say they didn't revolutionize and popularize the use of digital music would be a bit naive.
Apple has now changed the game again with the app store (in some ways good). We'll have to see what the newer players have to offer.
interesting article. in that it doesn't need an avalanche of apps. I think Palm is dead wrong. Wether it's an avalanche or not is a bit of semantics but i think it needs drastically more apps. I like pre but the lack of apps that i have use for (to date bought zero apps), is a major reason i'd go to a different platform and the current momentum in the apps store that is daily releases of nothing but novelty apps.
All that developer distribution stuff is fine and i hope that all makes people rush out and cause that avalanche of apps that Palm seems to think it doesn't need. But deep down i don't think the winner in this smartphone battle will be the one with the easiest approval process or the language that's based on the web it will be the one with the most users. And they don't care what programing languages are or the nuts and bolts of the approval process. So i hope that approval process leads to an avalanche that gets customers but right now all i see is an avalanche of novelty apps that i have little or no interest in.
I can remember an instance not too long ago before the iphones release when my friends girlfriend called my Treo 700p a computer/brick and would laugh at it...then poof 6 months later she was showing off her iphone and all the apps she could download and I was like big woop I have apps too maybe not as sophisticated or in one location but I had a wide variety of apps myself. Now the difference was that iphone made it cool all of a sudden to become a smartphone "geek" and made it cooler and easier to download these apps and not to mention cheaper. It is funny now to talk to iphone user's who arent as tech savvy (not that I am...more of a big fan!)think that their phone invented mobile apps!! Palm missed the boat on that one as I was sure they were going to release project NOVA a lot sooner with a better method of distributing apps!
Better late than never though!!
I do agree to most of the things said here... but let me tell you one thing: you guys can be so thankful to at least have a 600+ app catalog! Being from Germany, my app catalog counts 87 apps (yep, no typo: eighty-seven!!)
We do not even have paid apps! There is barely something useful available.
I have no clue why Palm has chosen this country-dependent distribution approach!
I could somehow understand, if it would take a bit longer to launch paid apps in Europe due to payment-issues or other stuff to take care of... but come on.... eighty-seven apps??? most of them have english descriptions anyway!
So why exclude hundreds of apps for the European market? Are *we* just an experiment? Does someone at Palm even care?
I hope that they are going to rethink this particular approach.
european users need to hush. wait ur turn. we get it. we don't need to hear it every day. shut.up.
By the way, Palm needs to get the rest of the world back into the AppCat!
Sorry, but without the worldwide success of WebOS, Palm will be in dire straits. Also, without a larger user base to install and purchase applications, the continued success of the Pre (not to mention any other WebOS devices) will be suspect.
So the Europeans (and Canadians, and Mexicans) all have the right to complain. They put their money down they should expect to be able to access all that we can.
And yeah, I complain when cool stuff comes out in Asia, and Europe that I can't have yet either.
http://www.palm.com/us/company/feedback.html or http://www.palm.com/de/de/company/feedback.html or http://www.palm.com/uk/en/company/feedback.html or whatever other country specific version.
Complain there. Complaining here day after day accomplishes nothing. Just putting that out there.
Apple made their product very user friendly. But I always felt Iphone was modeled off of palm. could I be wrong? I turned into an appolohic, i loved my palm. I still have no desire to go to iphone. Palm can and could be the iphone's strongest competitor. Web OS could be just what they need.
the only thing about the self-service-esque distribution model that sort of bugs me is that it leaves users' devices open to purposefully malicious applications. i'm sure palm, being a security-conscious company is thinking of this, but i just really hope they maintain some sort of control over submissions to prevent people from doing anything stupid. mining user data or whatever.
of course, i'm not saying people WOULD do it, but at least if someone reviews each submission, there's a possibility of catching it prior to deployment. what i'm saying is that a trust-based model involving palm just feels more "right" to me than allowing people to self-sign content and have palm distribute it transparently.