Anyway, now you know why I have been silent for a few days. The thing on my mind fora  good while now has been the AppStore craze. I think it is fabulous that Apple has sold 1 billion apps. But I think it’s madness for each and every one to give up their day-job in order to become an iPhone App developer (or any other platform with a newly opened appstore for that matter). Apple has been quick to use a few lucky ones as showcases of one-man shows that have had success. It is great and they really deserve it. What I am saying is that they are not the majority.

The underlying problem is still there and the appstores are just a new pain killer, possibly doing the job better than other things before them. The problem is the fragmentation in platforms. The lowest common denominator in mobile today is SMS. But it has its limitations in creating exciting experiences other than flirt SMS from that gorgeous girl on campus or delivering sports scores live.

After that we have browser based services, or mobile internet services formerly known as WAP services. It’s getting messy, but it is still manageable.

When we come to apps the fragmentations really sets in. And the entry cost to the game starts to be prohibitive. Some developers I talk to claim that they see costs as high as 50 000 USD to launch one new game app on a major US carrier. This is of course driven by demands to cover every handset ever sold by the carrier (well, almost).

The costs are dropping with the AppStores. Seems like Ovi store is the cheapest entry ticket at the moment, but it is also the most recent player with an unproven distribution power, and they are currently cutting down on resources in this area, even though they claim Ovi is becoming the platform for all their new service business to consumers. Read more about that in this Washington Post article.

So if you’re going the appstore route, think twice an make sure you do your homework. We are after all in a business with low value purchases and thin margins, so volume will always be key. And the appstores are getting crowded fast. You need to have a pretty strong marketing budget bhind you to get your app in front of real prospective buyers.

Good luck and see you next week!

The thing is though, you gotta have good stuff in them stores. And guess what, there are only that many different apps and derivatives of them you can market. In this great post  by Timothy Hay we see one side of that. The funds set up about a year ago to fuel the growth of apps have slowed down the investment pace. This makes perfect sense. Since these funds are normal VC funds and not government grants they will not fund any guy with an idea and the iPhone SDK downloaded to their laptop. Matt Murphy at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the other VC guys are still in the VC game. Finding the next Google or twitter. Not clogging the pipes in these various app stores with more of the same. 

What effects can we expect then? The loss of the near monopoly position in distribution that the mobile carriers have had is becoming more obvious. Just in the last few weeks more of my partners at the big mobile carriers content groups are talking about widgets, on-device-portals, preloaded app with attached flexible billing more than the portal. Off the record comments like \”I don\’t care about the portal anymore. It is all about getting stuff in front of the consumer in all possible ways\”, are on my record. 

App Store the new black? No, but a great catalyst for the next phase of the mobile content/app/web/expereince industry.

I see that as a sign of maturity for our industry. As in any industry that matures each party specialise more and try to build on their competitive advantages. Mobile operators have made huge strides in this direction as well. They have practically given up to become the DreamWorks for mobile content and apps. Their USP is pretty weak compared to the entertainment industry. But EMI or the Guardian are not that strong in offering access to the internet, do the billing or provide localisation data either.

Lynette Luna at Fierce Wireless develops this theme very well in her recent post. Just as I mentioned the other day there are some anomalies hanging around though. Hope that some encounters and discussions outside the MWC09 bubble will make Nokia and some others scrap some plans that just seem a bit too far away from their core. Even though the mobile internet is new, cool, hip and part of a paradigm shift normal business and marketing laws (and even gravity!) applies. Few think Nokia or Samsung when they think social networking. But as a tool to get to the social network of choice Nokia, Samsung and all the others have a great opportunity to be in the game.

However efforts like Ovi Store and others (thanks Steve Jobs for letting the Genie out of the bottle). The Ovi publisher model copying Apple’s 70/30 model makes a case for content developers to actually develop new innovative services instead of porting licensed properties to mobile. On the distribution side Ovi also has the potential for mass market reach, even though downloading a store app to the phone before I can purchase things over the air seems a huge impediment. Is this really going to be the case? I am looking for more details following yesterday’s announcement at the Nokia press gathering at MWC09 in Barcelona.

Another observation to support the statement that the industry is maturing is the growth in the B2B mobile solutions niche. We see mobile solutions companies beyond premium sms providers is growing their business across the board. Maybe some caution is relevant if we include mobile advertising. But the general trend that existing media businesses are mobilising themselves seems to be valid. Here the companies that depend less on advertsing revenue are the ones I expect to take the lead out of the recession. In a short few years I am convinced we will be baffled over how primitive and insecure our baby the mobile web was back in 2009. Yes, I remain the optimist.

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• Nokia Unveils Ovi Store, Application Sales To Debut In May (techcrunch.com)
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