Gizmodo asks if iPhone apps are headed towards oblivion arguing about the app store effect that is driving prices down to unsustainable levels and will spill out onto other platforms as well because "Customers expect to see functionally identical apps priced the same way across platforms, because to us, that's what makes sense".
There's just classic economy of scale working here. Even if there was no app store, I think iPhone platformed software would still be cheaper. Developers are welcome to bemoan "man I wish I could charge $20 for my app instead of $2", but my hunch since their sales numbers would look like the sales numbers for blackberry apps then. Thousands of sales, not millions. That quite clearly means to make the same amount of money, prices need to be higher. The high volume of app purchasers on the iPhone platform means lower prices.
Consumers are familiar with this. Microsoft Windows is maybe the largest, most complicated program ever. Yet it's only $100-200, because the market is so large. Photoshop is $700, because it has to be to allow Adobe to survive. The narrower the market, the higher the costs. If even consumers don't consciously remember this from 12th grade economics, they do understand it on some level.
The app store is brutally capitalist. There's near perfect information (search, reviews available, there are no discounts, and there is no other outlet) so consumers are able to vote with their wallets very effectively. Other platforms where you can sell directly to consumers, you can exploit the lack of information to inflate your price.
Notice I'm not talking about penetration of the platforms themselves. Obviously the numbers of installed users are large, but we're talking about the app-purchasing market. Apple has created a platform where apps are more obviously and prominently available to the consumer, and therefore they buy more. Until other platforms match this, Apple will have the advantage in market potential for apps to offer to developers.
If the complaint is that this is unsustainable, then companies offering apps at unsustainable price points will start to fail. This will either force them to raise prices, or close up shop, which will lift prices for that category. I don't believe in capitalism as the perfect model for everything, but it's really, really good at setting reference market prices at sustainable levels.
Apple isn't setting a race to the bottom, consumers are. As long as developers continue to provide quality software at a $1-5 price point, low prices are here to stay. If no one can stay in business at those prices, a higher price point will emerge.
Glyphboard is exactly why cut and paste on the iPhone is really cool. It's a way for apps to share information, no longer are they completely sandboxed off. Look for more really cool apps.
Bonus points for this one being an HTML5 web app.
So my system stopped recognizing all iPhones today. Neither organizer, nor iTunes would recognize either phone. I have only two guesses as to why at this point, either one, in the process of messing around trying to get my app onto my dev phone, I installed the iPhone configuration utility. Perhaps it overwrote a framework with an older version?
Although I did successfully sync a phone and app after that, so that seems unlikely (unless it waited for me to close xcode to go to heck). Other possibility, beta1 expired @ midnight?
I didn't even know I was using the beta frameworks, since I installed it into a different directory. It still replaces your Mobile frameworks, so you'll be running beta stuff if you do that. So when I reinstalled production Xcode or iTunes, it wouldn't replace them because it thought they were newer.
When I plugged in the phone, I got this:
4/6/09 2:33:01 AM com.apple.usbmuxd[1270] usbmuxd-152 built for Kirkwood on Mar 10 2009 at 00:33:05
4/6/09 2:33:01 AM com.apple.usbmuxd[1270] HandleUSBMuxCommand Client 0x104da0 using old version 0, current=1
4/6/09 2:33:01 AM [0x0-0x30030].com.apple.iTunes[1269] MobileDevice: AMDeviceNotificationSubscribe: USBMuxListenerCreate: No such file or directory
And that's all. Installing beta-2 of the 3.0 SDK over the old one updated the frameworks (usbmuxd in particular) and things work now.
Unexpected that I'm running beta stuff. I wish they did a better job of keeping things separate. Oh well.
There's definite confusion our there around the no-contract prices for the iPhone.
In short, there are three prices (I'm just listing 8gb prices here)
It's the 3rd one that's confusing; if #2 has no subsidy, what is the #3 price for? Is that extra money just to pay for not having to sign a contract. In my opinion, yeah, that's the "anti-unlocker" price.
The way they tried to patch the "unlock" hole before was by limiting cash purchases and restricting # of phones. Pretty bad patch really. I'm assuming unlockers don't (or often can't) provide all the info needed to open a contract, and wouldn't want the hassle of providing that info over and over again for each new phone, then remembering to cancel the contracts. Sounds like a pain.
So you have the third, higher price point. ATT gets just as much money as they would have if you walked into the store, bought the phone, and cancelled the contract.
Between the much higher price and near-worldwide availability, I think the unlock market dwindles. Regardless, ATT or Apple now doesn't really have to care if you unlock your phone now, because they've both made their money already, without a lot of overhead.
John Gruber (Daringfireball.net) writes about iPhone vs. Blackberry and says:
RIM doesn’t really have any lock-in other than user habits. The BlackBerry gimmick is that it works with the email system your company bought from Microsoft.
Which is not really true. I don't know what % of RIM's revenues come from their server products, but I do know the Blackberry -> Exchange integration is more complicated that just the user buying their own phone and hooking it up themselves.
The blackberry solution offers an "internet free" solution. Your exchange servers don't need to talk to the internet, they live buried in your firewall, passing messages to RIM's network, that sends them via the proper mobile carrier. That might not be the perfect description, but point is, there's network connections, server products, and support costs. I don't think the iPhone will be a drop-in replacement in large companies. Enterprises have built-in lock in. With the blackberry solution, the IT department is in charge of provisioning all the phones, and if I don't get the blessed, provisioned phone from them I can't even have a blackberry.
It remains to be seen exactly what the iPhone's solution is going to take to deploy. Or whether it will without a server be able to offer all the ticky-tacky big-brother things that enterprises love (disabling the web browser, or the camera, or the iPod, keeping logs on all calls, etc.). We'll know more once it's released.
Fortune thinks ATT wants to pick up $200 of your iPhone.
This could mean big, big things for Apple if it's true. I think this strategy makes the 10 million phones by the end of the year goal look like a drop in the bucket. Apple's not in the habit of selling anything at a loss though, but that's okay here since it's ATT that would pick up the tab.
The question is, why would they? And why wouldn't they at launch? Was it so calculated that ATT knew demand would drive 5-6 million phone sales that they could rake in bucks for, in return for taking the risk on the iPhone, and then after a year and version 2.0 they'd announce the subsidy, to go deeper into the market?
Brilliant strategy if true. For one it's obvious; it's just pricing things like the market will bear. Second, this makes the iPhone like an iPod; it puts it into kids' price ranges. Can you say "ubiquitous"? I knew you could.
So at the expense of some cash, ATT gets to own the market for what could be an iPhone-like domination of the phone market for the next 5-10 years. Bold.
For the most part I think applications obeying the "launch fast/quit fast" protocol implied by the lack of background tasks will do just fine. There's plenty you can do.
I can think of one major stumbling block though, and that's tasks that you can't just quit and suspend. Like, say uploading a file. Unlike mail on the phone, where you can send a mail, lock the phone, and hear the satisfying swoosh that lets you know your mail was delivered, if you lock, get a call, or accidentally hit home, good bye file upload. I can see ways to handle it sort of with UI, but noting jumps out as being as good as Mail's solution.
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