App is Crap (why Apple is bad for your health)

by Mark Suster on February 17, 2010

Absolute Power Corrupts, AbsolutelyiStock_000009523140XSmall

I was living in Europe in 2000 when the first WAP phones (Wireless Access Protocol) were introduced.  These phones were so over hyped.  They were going to bring the Internet to your mobile phones ushering in the era of “m-commerce.”  Gag.

I had just returned from living in Japan where I witnessed the hugely successful launch of i-mode by NTT DoCoMo so I knew the potential that the mobile web would ultimately bring, but I saw so many flaws in the launch of WAP.  But like lemmings, every company in the market rushed to proclaim they were launching WAP versions of their products.

I was attending a major industry conference in Barcelona at the height of the WAP excitement.  I was on stage in front of several hundreds of conference attendees.  The moderator asked each of us panelists the asinine question, “tell us what you’re doing about WAP!”  (you know,  as in “tell us what you’re doing about China?” or “tell us what you’re doing about location-based services?”).  The panelists went down the line and like lemmings announced their plans with glee.

It came to me.  With 5 years’ of British sarcasm under my belt I said, “WAP is CRAP.  We’re doing nothing.”  And I refused to say more.

Within a year WAP became the laughing stock of the mobile industry.  It was slow.  It was hard to use.  It required content sites to develop totally new content.  There was no engagement.  In Chris Dixon’s words, it wasn’t designed for normals.

Fast forward a nearly a decade.  I’m now a VC.  Everybody and their mothers are coming into my offices proclaiming that their developing the latest iPhone App.  Kleiner Perkins launches an iFund.  The new manta is “what are you doing about the iPhone.”  I have the same gag reflexes.  The model is all wrong.

So I attended a Red Herring conference in Laguna Niguel hanging out with Dharmesh Shah, James Citron, Rob Theis and others.  The topic is “The Future of Mobile Applications” and I pronounce, “App is Crap.”  It is a step backward for our industry.  It is a waste for most brands.  It is a channel disguised in business clothing.

I would argue that if Apple’s app model continues to succeed it is bad for your health.  You – being members of the technology community.  I know that I’m into FanBoy territory and am ready to be attacked.  Before you let me have it let me say I am a FanBoy of Apple products.  I am typing this on my brand new 15″ MacBook Pro.  I ran this morning with my iPod in tow.  I own an iPod Touch (not an iPhone – my house in Brentwood gets literally ZERO AT&T bars).  I buy all my music through iTunes and even buy some videos there.  I can’t be more of a FanBay of their products.  But I’m with Jason Calacanis.  I think Apple has become corrupted and its dominance in mobile is not good for the industry.

1. App is one step forward, two steps back – In 1999 I launched my first company, BuildOnline, a SaaS-based (back then we were ASP’s) content management platform for large-scale engineering and construction projects.  In the same year Salesforce.com launched a SaaS CRM platform to compete with Siebel.  They pronounced “The End of Software.”  It was typical Marc Benioff marketing hyperbole but it was very effective.

Their company, my company and countless others espoused cloud-based applications.  We had all worked in the software industry for a decade and saw the problems of on-premise software.  We evangelized to customer about the problems of on premise software.

- It is expensive for software companies to build for heterogeneous environments.  They therefore have large cost bases and have to pass on those costs to you.

- You have a data problem.  Your data is trapped on a client device (a PC), leading to security risks and replication problems

- You can’t access your data easily when you’re in multiple locations

- It’s harder to share data across multiple users

- Etc., etc.

When we launched browsers weren’t very functionally rich.  Therefore if you want to change just one field of data we had to redraw the entire screen.  That meant that user experience was not as rich as it would be for a client-side app.  But the trade-off in terms of flexibility and costs were enormous.  Enter the huge innovation in AJAX (asynchronous Javascript and XML), which let us redraw individual portions of the screen and therefore mimic user behavior on on-premise applications.  Enter Flash, which gave us a multimedia development environment.  The power of the web increased dramatically and “Cloud Computing” began to take a huge leap forward.

These days no serious company thinks about building on premise software companies any more.

Enter Apple.  They have popularize iPhone Apps.  You can argue that it is a necessary innovation to enable groups of users to interact with device in a way that they never could on carrier portals.  I agree.  To an extent.

I was so frustrated working with carriers in the 1990′s.  They were frustrated that despite having the (monopoly) infrastructure that brought you the Internet, the majority of innovation and profits went to Silicon Valley startups.  These same people later ran the mobile companies that were either part of or spun out of carriers.  And they swore they’d never let the application companies do it to them again.  So we as consumers (and as a tech industry) languished for 7 years.  You either had to do “on deck / on portal” deals where your app was rolled out through the carriers sh*tty operating platform or you had to go “off deck” which meant you had no customers.  And being gateways to the customer they naturally extracted their pound of flesh from mobile application developers.  And they were slow to approve people.

So I greeted Apple’s entry into the market with great excitement.  ”Finally the hegemony is broken!  Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead!”  Apple would be the first major device sold where the carrier’s crappy software wasn’t on the phone.  We would herald in a new era of innovation.  Google would soon follow with their own phones, it was rumored.  The mobile web would finally be open!  Or would it?

So Apple has encouraged application developers to set loose building apps.  We now have a couple of hundred thousand applications developed.  The web browsers are as immature as the Internet browsers were in the late 90′s.  And “native” (those installed on the device) applications can take advantage of features that the browser can’t like the acceleramator (which detects motion), the GPS (to get your location) and the camera.

But here are the major problems if this model holds:

- Every developer now has to have an iPhone development team.

- Every application has to be submitted to Apple for approval.  They are now a bottleneck.  When you change an application it has to be resubmitted – however minor the change.

- Apple is the new “gateway” that can extract a toll from you (sound familiar?).  Apple wants to take a major share of the revenue.

- Data within the applications is locked into the device

- Flash is not supported, which means that all assets you’ve developed for the Internet that work in Flash are worthless for this device

- Apple has sent out signals such as that they might like to own location-based mobile advertising.  If you encroach on this territory they may stop you or blow you out. They may do this / they may not.  They may encroach in other “interesting” areas.  They may not.

- Approvals are a black box.

And this is just the start.  Now the real problems.

- If you assume that Apple always dominates the market for the mobile web (a bad assumption) then they have absolute power.  If Google is sometimes flawed in it’s “do no evil” mission, you gotta believe that Larry and Sergey deep down believe this mantra.  Steve Jobs?  Erm.  Not so much.  He has done much good for our industry.  But “do no evil?”  See Point 4 below.

If you assume that there are many players, you’re probably right.

- Let’s start with Google’s Android.  You’ve just hired your iPhone development team for you app.  They’re super busy developing a new version of your product because, guess what, Apple changed it’s terms of service to allow in-app purchasing.  So you rush to develop a new monetization strategy which means rebuilding your app.  It’s taking time to finish the product because you’re super expensive iPhone developers (they’re in high demand) are not as good as you like (they’re super high in demand).  Should you now hire Android developers? Can your iPhone developers be good at both?  Do you have enough resource to cover both?

- And that Palm Pre.  I heard it’s pretty slick and Sprint seems to be pushing it really hard. I heard they have an App Store.  Let’s look into it. Maybe we could ship our app and see how it does?

- Oh, wait.  There’s that RIM company with the Blackberry.  Should we have an app for that?  They have a super relevant and high-end installed base including people like Mark Suster who never gave up his Blackberry since Apple only offers itself on a super sucky network for which their is ZERO bars of coverage at his house in Brentwood.  But their browser sucks, their app environment sucks, the developer community isn’t strong.  But we need device coverage, right?

- Oh, wait.  I need some Microsoft OS coverage.  I know Windows CE is dead despite having like a 100-year head start on Google.  But Windows is now making a push with Windows 7 Mobile.  Maybe we could get an application out early for that before everybody else does?

- And how about Symbian?  We’re going to want to develop for all those Europeans, right?  And Nokia has the Ovi Store thing, right?

Let’s see.  We’ve got two guys developing on the iPhone, two on Android, one on Palm Pre, one on Blackberry, o.5 on Windows 7 Mobile, 0.5 on Symbian and 4 doing QA on all these freaking iterations.   Man, I sure hope there is no more innovation in this field or we are Fawked!  Oh, frack.  There is this iPad thing is coming out.  Better set aside some budget for that.

I know that there is a period of time where apps need to reign.  But I for one am betting that the future is “the mobile web” not the “the mobile app.”  There will always be some apps that have reasons to be native on devices but I am betting that serious innovation will happen on mobile browsers and that the future will so most apps folded into the cloud.  We’ve already seen it once in the PC era.  It’s the best thing for our health.  We can build for one primary browser (like we do for Firefox on the desktop today) and then figure out how to get the rest working with whatever Microsoft builds.

It will be 3-5 years before this transition takes place.  Much money will be gained and lost in this period.  And somebody will win in the transition.  Wise companies will plan for this “great porting” to take place.  Unfortunately it won’t be in the next 3 years so we have to live through this temporary era.

2. Most companies are wasting their money on apps – In addition to believing that the app movement is bad for our industry I also believe that most brands should not have apps.  I have been pitched by too many companies that want to help every brand discover their inner iPhone self.  They have kits to help the The Gap, Banana Republic, McDonalds, Kmart, Kraft or whatever other brand develop iPhone apps (I made these brands up – I have no idea whether they specifically have apps).  But I don’t believe consumers are going to want to have 500 apps on their phones.

I don’t believe there is any compelling reason for The Gap, Bananan Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch to have apps on my phone.  What they need is simple.  Websites!  And I can visit them on my mobile browser when I want to.  So in this iPhone Goldrush many companies will make bucks selling picks and axes to iPhone gold prospectors but most will be fool’s gold.

3. Apple is a channel, not a business model – I see too many companies that are building iPhone App companies.  iPhone is not a business model unless you’re Apple.  It’s a channel.  It’s a way to reach your customers.  And single channel businesses are vulnerable to the vagrancies of the market place.  If you’re a “pure mobile” company that’s fine.  There is a strategy for that.  But you need to think in terms of broader distribution.

4. Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely.   Finally, to pick up on Jason Calacanis’s point – I’m worried that Apple’s success might be going to its head.  Lord Acton in the UK once famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Apple now has absolute power.  Not 100% but they have HUGE power.  They broke the hegemony in the on-deck carrier model only to emerge with temporary monopolist tendencies.  Now Google is going to try and keep them in check.

Apples actions speak for themselves:

- They don’t allow Flash on their devices.  Very knowledgeable and cynical people I’ve spoken with have given me a flavor of why.  There are so many free Flash games now where the owners of the handset and OS wouldn’t be able to have a cut in the revenue if they were widely distributed on iPhones.  In stead, you have to go through the Apple gatekeeper and pay an Apple toll to develop applications for their phones.  This isn’t open innovation.  This is a return to the carrier mindset.  People like Fred Wilson have written about this topic (and gotten attacked – so I’m prepared for it!)

- They control the approval process for new apps.  Anything they don’t like – they have absolute veto power.  Full stop.

- Example – the Google Voice kerfuffle.  We’ll never really know why Apple has blocked Google Voice.

- Want an iPhone but live in Brentwood like Mark Suster does?  Well you’ll have ZERO bars.  So you don’t have an option.  Why does iPhone only come on the AT&T network?  Because AT&T has given Apple the most lucrative deal of all the operators and pays handsomely to maintain this exclusivity.  In an open and free world this shouldn’t happen.  It’s total bollocks.

I’m willing to fund companies in the interim.  I hope to soon announce an investment that relies on the mobile application infrastructure in the short-to-mid term.  But I said to the CEO that I would only invest if he believes that they long-term is The Mobile Web and that our plan is to build something that can be successful in the intervening period but with the objective or porting as the mobile web browsers become more capable.

Guys, if Cloud Computing made sense for our desktop applications it’s certainly going to make sense for our mobile lives, too.  All the same rationale holds.

UPDATE: I guess the timing on my post was pretty prescient.  One day later Apple announced that any applications with “sexy” materials (including swimsuits, lingerie) was to be pulled from the App Store as outlined in this TechCrunch article.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • FriendFeed
  • del.icio.us
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • HackerNews
  • Suggest to Techmeme via Twitter
  • email
  • Print
  • Julius
    This was an excellent article. Thanks.
  • Couldn't agree more, and this has been our strategy building MocoSpace, our mobile social network with over 10 million members, the vast majority of which use us on the mobile Web (and from the US). So it's definitely possible to build a viable, successful product on the mobile Web, even today.
  • @ErnsTweets
    Agreem in general. The future of mobile is the web. But a couple apps are better 'app' based than on the "web."
  • Thank you for saying it. I couldn't agree more and I hope that companies will wise up and move past this phase as quickly as possible.
  • I agree with you -- our startup (Drawn to Scale) is very focused fact that more and more verticals (especially "Mobile", whatever that means) will be in "the cloud", and that companies are going to take a more "Cloudy" approach to their data.

    The one key benefit of "Apps" is that you can fully utilize the sensors of your environment. If you're a true "webapp with mobile version", then you can only code for the least common denominator handset.

    Maybe some future framework/ HTML5.5 will address this. Although I'm not sure how -- I'm not a front-end engineer :)
  • test
    test
  • fjorge
    My 2 cents,
    First of all, I’m a mobile developer and never took the web 2.0 wagon. So my approach to mobile is different from the Web PC. The mobile is so linked with our life and personal that I tend to see as new body member :). Never try to port literally a Web site to the mobile phone, or you will not get the advantages of mobile over desktop. You have to give the social, ubiquitous, different inputs, integrated billing, easy to use, properties to mobile. See a service like Google Goggles, that turns a search into a click (take a photo), rather than a "type and click" style from web pc (can´t get much easier than that, except Google read our thoughts). If you try to imitate this approach to desktop, you will see that is stupid.
    Where I disagree with you is the Web on the browser should be the primary target to apps. To deliver “mobile” value to the user we have to access various inputs (voice, photo, video, GPS, accelerometer, etc). The browsers/web technologies/standards can´t keep it up with a tight integration with the mobile phone (maybe in the future –not soon - it will be as we establish in the mobile OSs war). On the design side we have the small screen drama. The HTML technology relies on the “Holly scroll” to deliver the content and actualy is not have the creative flexivility to create an easy to use app. Besides in a no-touch phone you only get a slight improvement from 2000 wap technology (added color). On "always connected" side we will see soon how "mobile data" will be expensive (MNOs can handle the exponential data demands).
  • excellent post. "the future of the mobile internet" would have been a more apt, if less effective name.

    I agree with you about virtually everything but would you agree with me that timing is the greatest risk to your thesis? It could be 3-5 years but it could also be 10 yrs, especially given the current app craziness. I would love to see a more technical analysis/forecast of the evolution of mobile browsing. has anyone seen one?
  • I think the venom (sarcasm?) is misplaced. In my view, Verizon, Sprint, et al are crap...or at least used to be. I've watched companies try to get their apps onto these closed networks. Most fail and the cost is so high that thousands, ne, hundreds of thousands of apps never make it to end users. Apple came along (and lured AT&T into) and made the process of getting an app on a mobile phone several orders of magnitude easier and cheaper. Google is trying to one-up them and make it even easier (by luring Verizon). Do you think that would have happened without Apple? I bet no. Verizon would still be charging $1MM+ to get an app "on the deck". Indeed Apple may end up getting leapfrogged themselves (haven't we seen that before!), but there is no doubt that Apple transformed the mobile industry with the iPhone and for that I will be forever grateful (although maybe not forever a customer).
  • Sander van der Wal
    I don't agree with your post, and I think that the main reason is the time you have been working in the industry. You said a decade. That means you've seen the internet and the PC. That's it. Not the mainframe era, not the mini era, maybe a bit of the client-server era. Now, consider why the mainframe had trouble competing against the mini, why the mini had trouble competing against PC's in an client-server situation.
  • wilmark
    Wow, that was a great read. I am glad to see that there is still someone in the USofA willing to criticize the "great one" who is not an M$ freak. For the record, i'm a Linux freak! But i don't believe Google is going to prove any better in the long run. 500 apps might be annoying, but having important information floating about out "there" on someone else's servers could be potentially far more dangerous.
    Perhaps now that Symbian has gone completely open-source, not the fake open-source of Android, but real 100% open-source, its importance in the USA might begin to grow. What do you think?
  • I could not agree with you more. I boot up my PC, start Firefox and Tweet Deck... thats it!
    All my apps are in the cloud, all my files are in the cloud. If my broadband goes down im screwed but if my PC goes down I just log on another one.

    Talking of my mobile I spend so much time searching my apps for the one I want. All a mobile needs other than the phone software IMO is Gravity and a good browser, I am over the moon the hear that Firefox plan to come to mobile platforms this year, bets the standar S60 3rd FP2 browser I have in my Nokia N96 here in the UK.
  • isabellegenest
    I absolutely loooove this post. Thank you, I'll share it!
    Isabelle Genest
  • trashbat
    Another way of looking at this is, is if it generates more revenue than cost over the estimated lifetime, why not?
    Ocado's App is a superb example, that exceeds an already excellent online site.

    In most cases, the answer, of course, is 'No' - deciding to have an App then looking for what it could do is definitely the wrong way round. And to be honest, the same applies to most of the commercial apps on the App store too - classic software goldrush like the early 80s - bedroom coders seeing riches.

    On the other hand, I do see three big problems with targeting the mobile web, or web generally.

    1) You're largely stuck moving at the pace of the slowest player, aiming at the lowest common denominator. You may be able to offer a few visual niceties which safely fall-back, but you can't do anything fundamentally different. This is probably fine for most line-of-business apps, which aren't really much different from how they were in VT100 days, and your competition is the same.

    2) The question I ask back to anyone talking about cross-platform development (from Java to the web) is 'Why did your customer choose X?' - whether it's a computer, games console or smartphone. Are you respecting their reasons?
    Did I purchase a MacBook purely to use web apps, for instance? Are you making a plain financial decision (it makes no sense to develop software that won't pay off) or are you making one based on politics (proprietary systems are wrong)?

    3) I still question whether Cloud Computing does make sense for our desktop applications. I prefer solutions like Dropbox to pure Cloud storage, and most normal people I know use USB sticks to achieve portability, rather than logging into online office suites.

    I still question the motives of many of the people behind the push to the Cloud, and I think people need to be beware. Desktop software from dead companies still runs, dead Internet firms have gone, taking their customers data with them - and data locked on closed servers is far more insidious than data locked in proprietary file formats. It's good for business, but a step backwards for users.

    Anyway, all of this is meant more as points to think on - the reality is that we're developing a mobile web app, rather than iPhone one, for pretty much the reasons outlined.

    As for lack of Flash - my take on it is that the revenue from the apps is irrelevant to Apple. What's important is that they are iPhone only. Flash or any other x-platform tool undermines that exclusivity. If I can buy an Android and use the same programs, it purely becomes a hardware battle.

    Your free Flash games, on the other hand, are largely subsidised by models that won't work if they're running full screen on a mobile - and of course, unlike the App Store, there is no opportunity for the developer to sell their game at pocket money prices. We can criticise Apple, but they have also provided a good sales channel for developers, whereas Adobe's focus is on selling Adobe CS - that's how they make money.

    And there is, of course, the fact that it's not that great a piece of technology for developing games - consider that both Palm and Android OS have introduced Native development kits for games is an indication of this. We might wish it was better, as it would make a lot of development problems go away, but it isn't, and I think a lot of people are peddling snake oil with the idea of Flash as a Universal software runtime.

    And more to the point, you're just handing control from Apple to Adobe - one of the things that has pushed us over to mobile-web development using standards-based technologies has been Adobe's failure to deliver Flash 9/10 on mobile until now - too late.
  • stevenorth
    I love this because it creates fantastic barriers to entry against start-ups who can't afford to develop on all the platforms. As you point out apps will largely be the doorway to the mobile ecosystem for the foreseeable future so incumbents with a good web product and great apps have (at least for a good few years) a massive advantage. Welcome to the real world, with barriers.
  • Pranav
    The only take-away I got from this article is - dont' build a business based on the appstore. But wasn't that quite obvious already?
    On the other hand, ask yourself - HOW would opening the ecosystem benefit apple in ANY way?! Even a nincompoop heading the iphone business will protect their turf (through appstore) till whenever it is economically possible.
    Now the onus is on android (or windows mobile) to go forward from where apple has left off. Unfortunately from what I see no one has been able to take the fight to apple.

    And I am tired of people crying hoarse about how 'unfair' life is. Smell the coffee even if you are asleep. Apple does NOT need to do anything to help anyone else make any more money. Ask nokia or microsoft or google - they'll agree when it comes to protecting their turf.
    The reason why MS didn't stonewall apps (software) on their OS was because it was a lot more open, it developed in a completely different way - flexibility was an advantage. With mobiles, flexibility is NOT an advantage.

    I would really like to know what the author feels about google insisting that people log in with their google accounts into android to access complete features of the OS? Doesn't that stink of a company wanting to block competitors offering similar services?
  • z981845
    Great post, Mark. We (http://www.itanyplace.com) are trying to solve the exact problem you have mentioned in a unique way. Would love to get some feedback and advice from you.

    We have a cloud based platform through which user can set up a basic app in the cloud in minutes. At this point, user can either point her mobile domain to the app url for browser based access or generate code for native app (semi-connected or connected). For both access modes, code can be previewed in our browser based simulator and edited/customized in the browser based editor.

    Browser based app works across all device browsers and performs content adaptation. Native app runs across all major device OS like iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS, BB etc. For native access, the code is in html/js and runs on our client. The client talks to the device APIs (eg, gps, camera etc) by using whatever programming language is available on the device - but that is transparent to the end user. The user can download the code with our client and submit the app to the app stores or get us to submit it. The platform can be used for any B2E or B2C scenario.

    What do you think about this approach?
  • Great post. By and large, this is such a natural process that it seems awkward to think of things turning out any other way.

    Some things will have to happen as enablers for this, though... One of them is getting the technical hurdles out of the way - e.g. enabling mobile web apps to behave as nicely and naturally as native mobile apps can today. One way this can pan out is via some evolution of non-standard web API extensions.

    AJAX is a great example for something which started out as a non-standard extension of web standards and evolved to what it is today, creative a myriad of disruptive business changes on the way.
    We need something like that for some things that matter on mobile apps (such as GPS, accelerometer, etc.).

    [ IIRC Apple itself has introduced stuff like getting location via Javascript (in iPhone OS 3.0). While early standardization is probably the best thing we could've hoped for in a perfect world, in the real world an AJAX-like path of such nonstandard extensions developed by the trio (MS, Google, Apple) and somehow coalescing into something which can be used semi-transparently by abstracting over, is the more likely eventual enabler of these changes... ]
  • tjvilot
    I find it absolutely amazing that you go on and on about "open-ness" and yet you include Flash in your discussion.

    Flash is not open. It is a proprietary technology. And it is a technology plenty of people don't give a &^%$# about anymore. It has been relegated to being a video player or the technology of choice for clueless web designers.

    Please. Pick a better complaint.
  • mattycandy
    Amen
  • James
    The mobile Web is here now, and it's losing. Apple launched with a cloud app philosophy for the iPhone and it went nowhere. There is nothing keeping a company from building cloud apps for the iPhone now--it has a great browser for running AJAX apps. Users can even put direct links to cloud apps on their home screen, just like apps they download from the App Store.

    The reason everyone is flocking to apps is that they are more powerful and more capable, period. You can talk about strategy all you want but at the end of the day the better product wins with the consumer. And for most things, apps are a better product on such a limited platform.

    "These days no serious company thinks about building on premise software companies any more." Tell that to gaming companies, many of whom are very serious and successful on-premise software companies (including on the iPhone). You cannot access a GPU through the browser.
  • James
    Let me expand a bit on what I mean about "mobile Web." I mean an ecosystem in which apps are interacted with through a general-purpose browser like Safari. I would argue that many of the "purpose built apps" are really just custom focused browsers. On my iPod Touch I have the NY Times and Ebay apps and I use the built-in Maps app...even though all three are easily accessible through Safari. The experience is just better through the dedicated apps, even though the network data is the same.
  • Fang
    I agreed with most of Mark's points sans two: He went on and on about data being locked on the device but that’s simply not the case if the data is on the cloud. Strangely he also brought up the (lack of) network coverage issue within the same article that was supposedly to support mobile Web. Heh.

    In the end, it doesn’t matter what a bunch of technorati (developers, designers, and anyone who actually cares about this topic) think. It’s the end user that matters. Sure, there may be hundreds of design, technical, and business reasons that the mobile Web model is superior to the app model, but at this moment apps offer the end users better experience—richer media, more features, faster speed, perception of ownership, and more. The headache caused by browser bookmark management along makes the app model a much better experience.

    Of course, all this may change in the future. Web apps may one day provide better experience and thus better value to the end user. That will be the day the market shifts. What us technology and design geeks think is inconsequential.
  • Take a step back: how do you introduce the beyond-voice-SMS-mobile to the billions of persons with no smartphone/iPhone? Sure not with apps: one app for each thing? That's not for normals. Much better use a single use case for many different things. Think SMS. Think mobile web.
  • Closed and proprietary systems are traditional ways that companies have made money in the computer business. Apple is becoming more closed and proprietary with every new device. Yes, a mobile web is better for developers, but what does Apple get out of it? Selling hardware is fine, getting a cut from every transaction is even better. Apple makes sure the customer experience is great (except for AT&T) makes it easy to buy, makes it easy for developers to get their money, everyone is happy. Apple can open up later than the line, once it has consolidated its iTunes/appstore position.
  • Yes, I understand this argument well and know why companies focused on closed systems in the short term. It seems to me that walled gardens eventually erode. But we'll see.
  • Joe
    Yawn. Call me when someone else even remotely brings the same innovation to the computer or mobile market as Apple.
  • edwin
    Imagine Bill Gates trash talking competitors like Jobs is Adobe and flat out banning them from Windows.

    The Apple is rotten.
  • Dominic Endicott
    As a fellow VC focused on wireless, and Chairman of a company focusing on Mobile Web software, I appreciate your articulation of the app problem and championing of mobile-web. Nevertheless, we have accepted that Mobile Apps today push the envelope of consumer and even enterprise experience on smart-phones, and learned to embrace the app, and iPhone's role. My view is that the mobile app and the optimized mobile web (for the non-optimized variety is truly cr*p), will co-exist (one indication is that roughly 50% of the top 100 web-sites in the US have at least an iPhone App and 50% have an optimized mobile-web experience and 30-35% have both), and that these two formats will push each other to ever greater performance. As mobile-web gets richer, development will shift increasingly away from apps, given the greater economics of write-once development. I agree that this is a 3-4 year window and in the mean time the last thing you would want to do is miss out on the amazing experiences afforded by native app development on smartphones. The experience afforded through a best-in-class smartphone app, leapfrogs that of everyother consumer interface - including in many cases the full-screen web experience. We are on the brink of an explosion of creativity and customer experience, and the prime catalyst has been the iPhone.
  • Dominic. I agree with your comments. I accept that there is temporary period of time where the native app is more powerful. I am just hopeful that we can get to browser capability increases sooner rather than later for the sake of software companies.

    BTW, we met when I was in London and when we were raising money for BuildOnline. Weren't you with Warburg Pincus? Or am I misremembering?
  • Free iPhone apps are the new Flash mini-site. But we have the web and it works. Most of the features "app" developers want are exposed to web pages. I'm an Apple Developer, and just this week I tried to talk two organizations out of developing iPhone apps and making web pages.
    There is a place for real applications: uStream Broadcaster, 3D games, Camera apps, etc., but most iPhone Apps should be web pages.

    One reason publishers love iPhone apps is that they can charge for them. No rational person expects to be able to charge for a web page.
  • fatmann
    Nice post.
    But I have tens of apps, related to three hobbies I have, on my iPhone and on my iPod Touch. This is of tremendous importance to me personally. That's why I own these devices. And I can also make phone calls with one of them. It's apps I want.
  • fatmann
    and WAP was crap mostly because of the lack of mobile IP networks at that time. imode would also have been crap on circuit-switched. imode became a huge success mainly because of the business model, allowing developers to keep a larger share of the revenue, unlike the greedy European carriers/
  • Conceptually all of the arguments in this blog makes sense. But nothing seems to account for the fact that enterprise applications require an entirely different level of functionality. Why have Rich Client applications been the most successful UI for the enterprise -by far! Even in the what, 10+ years we've have had the web, we have to stuff it full of plugins to make it work. It's ridiculous. How do we make 2 apps talk to each other? Copy and Paste. Whoppee dee. I go to customers still using green screens and they work. The Users are fast. Perfect? No, but I've yet to see a web app that can deal with a users speed, type ahead, multi-tasking, fast context saving and more. Until we find some new "development" platform that allows for more than just basic accounting, contact management or field select/clicking in the web, I don't see how you'll stop Flash, Silverlight, Iphone or other "Rich UI's" not trying to dominate. Is that right? No and I agree with the author but his 3 years estimate will fall way short. There are still 10-15 year old apps running in most enterprises and no-one has even started on the road of a rewrite.

    We need a new paradigm and perhaps we should ditch the "Browser" and think again. The Browser was a concept for viewing documents that we have hacked and hacked until it's so fragmented, even my wife (who isn't a legacy UI person) prefers the 10 year old Quicken UI in their fat client over ANY app in the Browser! My 2 cents. We need something "NEW" - from the ground app that puts the center around the business logic. We need a 5GL and then the presentation pieces should be super RICH.
  • imse4n
    Great post, man. Intelligently written and thought provoking. I am on the same page with ya...
  • just replied here: http://www.appolicious.com/articles/1379-apps-a...

    started to type comment but it got too long :-)
  • Ben
    I do not want the damn Flash Player on my iPhone! There are good reasons why it has not been ported; it's a resource hog. Even on my 2Ghz macbook goes into meltdown viewing Flash files, plus it's buggy. I think Apple have been wise not to include this terrible plugin into the iPhone OS.
  • great read mark! i just wrote a little article on the iPad, iPhone (and Apple's non-Flash stance) and how interactive advertising is suffering from them - and ultimately consumers - by way of a flawed user experience. check it out: http://mcapraro.com/the-ipad-and-interactive-ad... i think it extends your thinking here.
  • Actually I'm heartily sick of these technologies. It seems that technology is helping bosses to keep track on their employees 24 hours a day.
  • i agree with the fundamental premise that the web will ultimately win....but man, i really hate today's 'mobile web', especially for shopping....i would really love and use some branded catalog apps for my favorite shopping sites. as mark indicates new technologies will close the gap and make the web experience as rich as the app experience, but in the meantime, i would buy more stuff from my favorite brands if i had a good catalog app on my phone.

    especially agree with mark's point about being a 'mobile' company, not an apps company. as i embark on creating a newco around mobile and apps, i will keep this mantra in focus.
  • Agreed, Jim. Today's mobile web doesn't cut it. I hope we'll make progress and hope that the App Web doesn't retard this growth.
  • Man this is timely. I am dealing with this multiplatform handset cluster right now. The dev expense is only half the issue. There is the whole support issue that follows in supporting multiple OS for handsets meaning you need CSR's (more of a business issue than for consumer plays).

    You had to know the whole Flash thing was bull shitake (sorry, GK ref)...that's just all wrong.

    Nice post "Mark Suster with zero bars" (you're native American Indian name?)...
  • Thanks for pointing out. When I wrote this I was thinking more about the ongoing maintenance issues of multi-OS support (from a technical perspective) than the initial development. I didn't make that clear and you did. Thank you.
  • Powerfull analysis about Iphone web apps.
    Thanks.
    at last someone has a mind.
    I am just a bit tired about the "party attitude" towrad Apps.
    I am also so happy to see android confronting Apple on this field.
    Open, open , open, open the winner will be in this field.
    While open means ... a single development tool for avery handset.
    Flash can be this I hope. But also javaScipt-html.
    and why not a java-javaFx comeback.
    In the meanwhile I will just way for things to mature.
  • Kevin
    How could Flash be this hope? Is Adobe going to offer it as an open standard sometime soon?
  • wilhelmreuch
    So what is the difference from the current situation with a web that is controlled by Adobe? Currently we have no open web - a device maker cannot innovate and create a device with any optimized redenring of webpages.

    Why? Because you need Adobe's blessing - you need their Flash-platform on your device. Or else you will only render incomplete webpages.

    The Apple iPad shows this problem. Is it Apple's fault that we have all ben fooled by the web builders? That anyone could make a browser? In some distant past maybe - but curently the web is locked to Adobe Inc.

    So I think it is great that Apple caved in and allowed us to make applications optimizted for their multi-touch device. Yes, caved in, because Apple at first just pointed us devlopers to making web applictions. But web applications are a closed business - you can only do this on Adobes platform and the only supplier of serious tools for this platform is of course Adobe.

    In a perfect world the web would be open to anyone. Currently Adobe own the web and is current filibustering the HTML5 standards group. I see it as a positive sign that Apple offers us an alternative in writing apps with the iphone sdk.
  • I'm not arguing in defense of Adobe. I believe in open web standards and am pro HTML5. But Flash is a reality and people will want to protect their existing investments. Not allowing this causes much industry consternation.
  • Word! I ran into the problem that most of the data i stored in apps on my windows mobile are not easy to transfer into the android.
  • Svitojus
    Coherent.

    I am not in this business, but as a consumer I always wanted iPhone because of it's looks and usability. The software part freaked me out, so I never got into this craze. I don't like something, that would limit my choise. It's like as if McDonald's were the only ones and would offer two hundred different meals. I don't want that. It means that at any point they feel they want to make me do something I would have to.

    Free world, yeah.
  • I am not sure I agree with any of this. Obviously, there is a AppStore bubble taking place with iPhones, and yes, the overhead of provided a version of the same app for every kind of device is prohibitive, but are these bubbles necessarily bad? I would say that the line between a bubble and sustainable, steady growth is very fine. Any new technology brings with it a kind of a gold rush, and really, the history of technological progress is a series of gold rushes. The companies the thrive are the companies that see beyond the next bubble, but I don't think that necessarily translates into the strategy of sitting idly by and waiting for the next opportunity with sustainable growth behind it to come about. So it is a balancing act between joining the fray and sitting on the sidelines, and I do believe that the fray is a better competitive environment for the sustainable growth businesses to emerge.
  • But I'm not arguing there's a bubble. I'm also not arguing that apps shouldn't exist for some people. I just don't think that this is where the market will end up ultimately. And for the industry the app movement has its downside. Specifically for software companies that will need to build multi platform apps. That's all.
  • Mark, great post and very well thought out. I am a long time follower and first time commenter. This post deals directly with what my company faces on a daily basis with m-Commerce. We are able to transcode a website on to any smartphone usually with full functionality and little/no back-end involvement.

    We started pitching it to e-Commerce companies as the perfect bridge to the mobile space. In some cases, we have noticed e-tailers naturally receiving 2% - 4% of site traffic from mobile users and poor conversion.

    Some CMOs seem to be enamored with building an iPhone app in order to play catch up with their competition. An app is viewed as brand extending, a rich experience, and a “cool thing” to have while being viewed as experimental. I give a ton of credit and thanks to APPL for accelerating the mobile environment. However, I agree it is very short-side and will be hard to support across various OSes. As things are shaking out, why not address more users than less?

    Similar to a PC-based experience, an intuitive action by a mobile user is to search for a website or directly enter the URL. Now, apps have proliferated and created too much noise. Some companies offer great apps or others have strong brands that automatically have mindshare, so people will seek them out and download those apps.

    Sorry for the long response. It would be great to get your thoughts on what you are currently seeing and how you envision the next few years developing.
  • Nitin, thanks for your input. I think for the next 5-7 years people will need purpose built web apps (versus just web sites that are architected to work on mobile). Sounds like solutions like yours are doing a good job of helping people get started.
  • Incisive post. Thank you. When the networks are fast enough and the devices are truly open, the app will be dead. Until that time, apps will be a well guarded revenue generator.

    Expect to see many more devices running touch UI and an accelorometer in the next couple of years. Games will always sell. Expect to see advertising revolutionise the mobile browser. And if they are allowed, expect to see more utility apps.
  • eliafreedman
    I've been in mobile for 13 years, have complained openly about the write three hundred times, run once problem, and have written articles for my own blog and ReadWriteWeb on the subject of cross-platform mobile development. So I'm curious about your opinion on a couple of topics:

    1. How do you feel about app dev products like phoneGap and Appcelerator that serve as a "write with mobile standards" but create native apps? Is this an intermediate step to "write a mobile web app" in your mind or a long-term solution or not a solution at all? What do you think about the fact that these apps and web apps don't usually act and feel just like a native app?

    2. I have to admit that the Facebook/ReadWriteWeb fiasco is enlightening. Is this a statement on the average users ability to actually use a web site (and thus a mobile web app)? Are these people better off with little icons and apps that take all the web stuff out of the way? Even the writer of the Facebook iPhone app feels that it is better than the website. (Joe Hewitt works for Facebook and works on their website as well.) Are these people really just an ignorant minority or is this a deeper reality that Apple's apps, iPhone and iPad are actually addressing?

    I have opinions but would love to hear yours.
  • Mark - you've been a roll lately. This is another great post. In addition to all your points, the mobile web will win because people understand how to search the web. If I can Google (or use my search engine of choice) on my phone, I will use it before searching someone's app store. So will everyone else who moves from using the web on the desktop. Let's face it, human behavior does not change as fast as technology does.

    My company's been focusing on the mobile web for the past year for all the reasons you mention, but also because it was a great differentiator against the sea of app companies out there. Now I need to go put on my sneakers so I can run faster than all the competition you are going to inspire to jump into the mobile web with me :)
  • Kevin
    You may be right that the Internet and the Cloud is the true solution for mobile apps/services, but I find myself disagreeing with most of your specifics in your assessment:

    1. Apple does NOT take a "major share of the revenue." That was true before the App Store, but Apple lowered the distribution fee to 30%, and 30% out of 100% is not major.

    2. Data is NOT locked into the device. As an example, I use WriteRoom, and its documents can be retrieved from a wifi-connected computer without going through Apple.

    3. Flash (at least the kind that works on the Internet) is not yet implemented on the majority of smartphone platforms (not Android, Blackberry, iPhone OS, webOS, etc).

    4. Apple "may or may not" - well, everything is may or may not. Google and Nokia as well "may or may not." What does that mean?

    5. The average approval delay now for apps is 4.65 days. These seems a small price to pay compared with a stores that have "downloading errors and carrier billing difficulties." See http://moconews.net/article/419-the-buzz-among-...

    6. Over 165000 different apps (Mark says couple hundred thousand, whatever) have been approved through that Black Box. Including app updates, it's more likely over 1 million. And the number that have been disapproved for controversial reasons is likely less than 1000. So yes it is Black Box but one that approves way more than it might controversially disapprove.

    7. Absolute power does corrupt absolutely but as long as there are other channels - and there will be as Apple's model, unlike the Microsoft Windows licensing model, cannot achieve 95% of the market - Apple will be restrained by what its competitors do.

    Apple suggested web apps back in 2007 (and it was met with developer derision), but Apple actually still publishes a web framework called PastryKit. See http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/pastrykit

    Kevin
  • Hey, Kevin. You're points are well argued so I don't want to get nit-picky. Just say a couple of things:

    1. Major does not mean majority. To me 30% is major. It's a lot.
    2. My kids play with lots of apps. They get you into the free version. The data you build there doesn't port to the paid version when you buy it. Nor does it port to other devices or the cloud.
    3. Others have openly said they will support Flash. Apple has openly said it won't.
    4. True, but there have been rumors specifically of Apple telling developers, "do not develop general purpose location-based ads. That will be our domain." It is true others might take the same stance. Good point.
    5. I don't believe this is supported by the first-hand anecdotal input that I have. Regardless, I don't want any intermediary "approving" my having an app. Should be web.
    6. Black box = black box. Power to approve = power. I prefer an open web where the market decides.
    7. To a degree. But right now it is so dominant in the market that it is the kind maker.

    Re: PatryKit - I'm not familiar with it. I appreciate your pointing it out.
  • Kevin
    1. In the US, nobody was offering 30% before Apple did. Maybe some have gone further since, but are those distributors breaking even?
    2. That's up to the app. Apps can send data to the cloud and can port to the paid version if they want.
    3. Jobs once said "Flash Lite isn't Flash on the web. Flash for mobile is a battery hog. Fix it." I'm sure I can find the link if I have too. Does Flash 10.1 fix it? Who knows? Apple never pre-announces or pre-commits when it doesn't have a reason to.
    4. Apple never said "do not develop general purpose location-based ads. That will be our domain." Show me the link, or is this the telephone game? Apple did say "Apps that use location-awareness primarily to deliver ads will be returned. End/Stop." If your app involves travel, navigation, social networking, shopping, then using location-awareness is not primarily for ads. (If anyone has been rejected for this, please make it known.) If your app is a standalone tic-tac-toe game, then it most likely won't. Now I think it would be more than fair to criticize Apple for not letting this be a user opt-out.
    5/6. In the retail world, there is an intermediary who approves whether your product can get on their shelves. That intermediary serves a purpose for its customers - it filters according to its brand image, which is based on its target audience - although they all sell jewelry, Walmart does it one way, Target another, Amazon another, Nordstroms another, Tiffany's still another. Apple is saying that it will be the intermediary for its customers. If your target audience (customers) want to go direct to you, then Apple iPhone Apps isn't for you. And that's okay, there are other choices for you. (Note: Apple is still learning how to operate the App Store, so yes, criticize specific instances and push Apple to change. Since many have done that, trademark law has been clarified, consistency and speed of approval has been gained.)
    7. Why is the Apple channel dominant? Because over 90% of its customers are satisfied whereas customers in other channels are less so? Because it's stupid media hype? That's the question you should answer. If you can make another channel work so well that your 90% of your customers are satisfied, and that there are enough customers to run a business profitably, then I encourage you to make it happen. But just say that, no need to inaccurately disparage the other channel that is serving its iPhone customers well.

    In any case, thanks again for your views. I, myself as a software engineer, am fine with the "web." At one point, I thought the younger generations would be proficient with the web, having grown up with it, but the more I see what young people (15-35) do, the more I think the web is still too complex for the masses.
  • Great points. I would also add that internationally the mobile web is really coming into it's own. About 80% of the phones in the world do not fall under the 'Smart' category. Yet, since even the most simple cellphones have browsers, they are quickly becoming the first gateway to the internet for many. This is especially true in developing countries...

    I was wondering what you think about the mobile-web as it pertains to monetization. Do you believe the mobile-web will run a similar course as the internet did for the last decade where advertising played a big role?

    Great post Mark! I'll definitely use this for ammo when challenged on our decision to be a mobile web company instead of app. Thank you.

    Mike
  • I think advertising is one component but also virtual goods seems to be another solution people are experimenting with.
  • "It will be 3-5 years before this transition takes place"

    Mark, good post. Have you tried the web-based Google Voice interface on your iPod touch? They did that all with HTML 5 as an end run after getting their native app rejected. And that's real now. Sure getting access to the low-level things like the accelerometer and GPS is currently impossible for a web-based app but you can do some impressive things w/ HTML5 _and_ do development once and serve multiple device types. I bet the mobile web you're describing happens a loot sooner than 3-5yrs.

    sean
  • I hope you're right! But experience tells me these things take longer to mature than people expect.
  • SPQRUSA
    Wow! Lots of frustration here, and, fortunately for most of us, this is all wrong. The author seems to greatly lament the advent of iPhone Apps Store after initially praising it. But it's not clear what the real beef is with iPhone Apps? Don't buy iPhone or Apple products if you lament their practices. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in any sense of the term unless you include FanBoy monopoly. You can choose to buy their devices or not - why does Apple have to sacrifice it's platform quality to please a developer community (Flash) to which it has no binding interest? Why does Apple have to have an "open" and "transparent" acceptance process? Do you have some fundamental right to run crappy software on your device only so you can later sue (or lambast) Apple for letting crappy software on your device? Software and Hardware are inextricably linked - bad software reflect poorly on the iPhone which reflects poorly on Apple.

    What the author completely misses is that Apple is more than a consumer electronics company - it's a company that deeply cares about the quality of its products and the end-user satisfaction. I am sure he is happy to churn out a load of different applications for every possible platform so he can maximize his profit. Apple isn't looking to be everything to everyone, but it is looking to provide a high quality experience to those who chose to use their products. I for one, will not buy any of this guys software - he's a w*ore.
  • I don't sell software so you have nothing to "not buy." I can enjoy Apple products AND Apple applications while still feeling that this is the wrong long-term solution for the industry. These are not inconsistent thoughts. As for being a "whore" - I think having software running on multiple devices is a prudent strategy for any independent company in order to not risk being beholden to any individual product or channel.
  • bill slenter
    Mark, I've never commented on your posts before, but I'm sure it won't surprise you one bit that this one compelled me to respond (being the iPhone geek that I am). I enjoyed the read and your perspective on where this could all be heading. I'll comment with some end-user perspective (knowing little or nothing about the business end of this).

    Overall I have mixed feelings about the App movement. From a user perspective, Apps written specifically for the iPhone give a far richer, more fluid, and certainly faster experience than any website, even iPhone-optimized sites. Examples are eBay, Best Buy, Amazon, Southwest, imdb. For all of those, I went ahead and downloaded the free app to use instead of their optimized websites, because I visit them often enough to dedicate an icon on my springboard to it. I appreciate that these are available, and I've got to believe that the logic at these companies was that they could measurably increase hit count and draw people in if they invested in developing optimized apps for the massive base of iPod/iPhone users out there. (Plus a healthy dose of the lemming factor was involved I'm sure. But I'm an engineer not a financial guy, so tell me if I'm wrong.

    With that said, I totally agree this is unsustainable in the long run. I've bypassed as many storefront apps as I've downloaded, just because I don't want a hundred apps on my phone (I already have far too many). I didn't download Target.com, and I don't even use Google's custom search app, or Yahoo's. I just open up Safari and use that for search. Works fine.

    The problem I see is that, despite all the advancement in mobile web technology (Safari on the iPhone being the pinnacle of that), mobile web still can't match a custom app in terms of fluid user experience. That's been the goal for a decade with java and other browser development languages: universal software that works just as well on any computer. But while mobile devices are FAR more powerful than they were even a few years ago, they are still an exercise in compromise. The screens are small and resolutions vary, battery life is limited, data bandwidth is often iffy, browser standards and capabilities vary, you know the story on mobile Flash, etc. Custom apps cut through all that limitation and provide the best experience by far. But they cost money to develop for all these different phones.

    There's still much evolution yet to happen. HTML5 brings promise, but it won't get us there all on its own. In the meantime, it will continue to be a combo of optimized apps and some mobile web for most users, and I chose to buy an iPhone over competing brands because I know the huge iPhone user base will guarantee that, if a company I do business with decides to develop an app, they will most certainly develop it for my phone first. The others will be a much less certain cost-to-benefit proposition.

    From purely a user perspective, App is not Crap (though it still has its issues), certainly not in comparison to WAP (which was utter crap from start to finish). But I agree App is not the long term answer, and I can understand the frustration from a business perspective. And yes, Apple is getting corrupted for sure. Glad there are other players to help keep them in check (but so far, only barely). I'm actually very excited about WinMo 7 (even though I don't personally plan to change phones). Nice to see a behemoth company finally get it, and drive new innovation.

    Sorry to hear you still don't have AT&T bars. That's inexcusable. Maybe this year they'll put a tower in? Or you could get one of those pricey femtocells when they finally roll it out nationwide. I keep thinking Verizon will get the iPhone soon, but who the heck knows...
  • Thanks, Bill. You should also say in your comments that you're my go to source for gadget info! ;-)

    re: App is Crap, I agree that App is temporarily good for the user. Much richer experience. And I can live with this is as a temporary market. My issue is that in the long-term it's bad for the ecosystem. Bad for software developers. Bad for new entrants in the handset market. But for carriers. So from that perspective it's crap. Your arguments of "richer experience" are the same that everybody used in the PC era.

    Also, I'd like to see Apple throw more $$$ at making the mobile browser more powerful.
  • bill slenter
    Agreed. The technology needs to get better, and so do the web standards. Although all PCs now have enough power to run a rich experience in the browser, the move to mobile internet is taking us a step back in terms of raw computing horsepower, so the technology needs to be refined even further, and we need to move away from bloated plug-ins like Flash to efficient, standards-based web technologies that enable rich content and a slick UI similar to what we get in custom apps.

    I am curious to see how Palm's web-based OS and 3rd party development environment plays out over the next year. Just how hard can developers push the technology, and how good will it look compared to custom apps on the iPhone? I realize that even Web-OS is somewhat proprietary, but perhaps it's a step in the right direction if it's powerful enough.
  • Nice post Mark, you brought up a lot of valid points.
  • Awesome points. You are correct in comparing this current mobile app wave with desktop software development. We all know desktop software development is dying and this will too for many of the same reasons. Mobile developers will make some $$ in the short term, but the fad will end eventually.
  • Although everyone complains about Microsoft's dominance in the browser space (after taking over from Netscape), the fact of the matter is -- sometimes it is very helpful for an industry to have a single common user interface & platform.

    WAP actually had potential, as a common standard, similar to the way the W3C led HTML 1.0 in 1993 and HTML 2.0 in 1995. At the time, Netscape ruled the browser platform, and they led the standard. But, as 1996-1998 rolled around, any/all web design shops had expend substantially more work to ensure that web sites looked the same on Internet Explorer as well. However, fundamentally, both browsers, were 99% compatible with the standards.

    The question to ponder is why the developer community has not rallied behind a single unified standard. Should a derivative of WAP be introduced again today? And, led by the followers (Google, Symbian, Microsoft, RIM, & Palm)? Absolutely. Will it happen, doubtful. Too many parties involved. And, more importantly, Netscape taught us that leading the open standards movement doesn't necessarily help win/maintain market share. The "normals" could care less.
  • I'm not sure I agree. Microsoft sat on the browser for YEARS with no investment or innovation until Firefox came along and started taking market share. I think competitive markets win every time. That said, I accept that de facto industry standards (e.g. TCP/IP) are a benefit for all. But where commercial interests are strong I'm less convinced.
  • Geoff
    I don't understand this. There are web standards, many of which are being hashed out formally in the HTML5 working group. There are HTML audio and video tags being standardized. There is offline functionality now supported in some browsers. Location services. Advanced animation. There's a whole host of capabilities available in modern web browsers (Firefox, Safari, Safari Mobile, Android web browser, chrome) such that people can write pretty sophisticated web apps RIGHT NOW which can run on just about any device. Google has its Gmail, Voice and Latitude web apps for Safari, as just one set of examples. Facebook and Flickr and Twitter have lots of features available on mobile web apps.

    While I hear a lot of hostility here about Apple's "closed garden" Apple encourages the development of web apps and even has a frequently updated directory of web apps -- http://www.apple.com/webapps/ . I agree there are some native iPhone apps that don't really seem necessary (Gap? Really?) or which can be done just as well as web apps. But it also is the case that some really sophisticated things cannot be done as web apps -- remembers developers complained loudly after the original iPhone provided no way to develop native applications -- and creating browser-based standards for developers to follow is a more cumbersome, less innovative process. There's no reason web apps and native apps can't co-exist.
  • Geoff, I think you're right on that iPhone apps could co-exist with web apps. The problem that's being called out is that Apple is showing preference to iPhone apps versus the web by disabling the most prevalent form of rich web technology - flash. Hard to argue that's not acting in a "closed" self-serving fashion. Charlie
  • Geoff
    Charlie, you make a valid point. But I have two things to counter that with. First, as I mentioned earlier, I think Apple's exclusion of Flash is less an attempt to close things off than a response to Apple's desire not to have another company's code which they can't control as an integral part of its operating environment. With all the talk about Flash, it's important to note that it's not currently available on any of the other new and popular mobile environments. It's not available on Android. And it's not available on Pre. A late beta of Firefox Mobile for some Nokia device removed Flash support at the last minute because it was a performance hog. I think it's fair to say that Adobe has faced challenges getting Flash to work on these operating systems, and for Apple to place heavy reliance on another company's closed-source software (especially another company's buggy closed-source software) would be orthogonal to Apple's desire that the iPhone/iPad/iPod work well.

    Second, I like the comparison someone between Flash now and Internet Explorer back in the day. Several years ago, IE was the de facto standard, and Firefox (and later Safari/WebKit) countered with its support of web standards. Problem was, IE didn't follow those standards, and a decent proportion of web applications were built on Microsoft's proprietary, Windows- and IE-only ActiveX technologies. So when Firefox (and later Safari) were released, a significant proportion of web sites would not run properly due to their reliance on proprietary Microsoft technology. But the web standards world won, and now most web sites use publicly defined and non-proprietary technologies which ensure their web sites can display and function properly on multiple browsers, including Firefox, Chrome (based on the fully open-source WebKit technology championed by Apple), Safari (based on WebKit), Safari mobile (based on WebKit), Android (based on WebKit), Firefox Mobile, the upcoming Blackberry browser (based on WebKit) and other web browsers, all of which are based on open-source code. This is the case despite the fact that there are still things that *could* be done using ActiveX controls that still can't be done using HTML/Javascript.

    One can write apps using Flash, but again you're placing reliance not on a set of open standards but on closed technology largely championed by one vendor which makes the proprietary system. (I'll believe Flash is really non-proprietary technology when you have a production Flash player which *isn't* developed by Adobe.) Is that a better state of affairs than relying on Microsoft's ActiveX controls?

    Finally, if you can make a self-contained Flash runtime, you can run it on the iPhone. Adobe's come out with some sort of compiler which compiles the app into an iPhone app, ready for submission to the app store, at the cost of some performance hit versus a native iPhone app. While that doesn't eliminate the Apple gatekeeper concern or Apple gatekeeper "tax" (although good luck getting to keep 70 cents of a $1 app if you sell it yourself), it'll work for a lot of Flash apps.
  • Geoff
    I find many of the points you make valid, but I disagree about your reasoning regarding Flash. I think it boils down to a simple technical reason. Apple wants to be in control of all system-level code on the computer. Some of that is open source, some of that is not open source, but Apple has access to all of it. If there's a security problem with the code, Apple can see the problem and fix it. if there's a performance problem, Apple can examine the code and try to improve it. Moreover, traditionally Flash has been a significant source of problems on the Mac, responsible for a large proportion of application crashes -- I assume that's one of the reasons that Apple, in Safari 4, implemented some limited sandboxing so that when Flash crashes it doesn't bring down the web browser.

    I don't get the gatekeeper or toll argument. Because you make the argument in brief, I don't know if you are contending as others do that Apple wants to keep revenue from the sale of apps, movies and TV shows to itself and so uses the absence of Flash to block web-delivered media such as Hulu from the iPhone. But Apple has proven perfectly willing to not only allow these types of media to stream on the iPhone through native apps (such as TV.com's offerings of CBS programming), but it has even allowed iPhone apps to facilitate streaming of media which is paid-for outside the Apple ecosystem. Users of MLB's iPhone app could get a year of streaming to their iPhone, and other devices, with the purchase of a $100 season package acquired directly from MLB on their website. (Hulu, by the way, blocks mobile devices using Windows Mobile from accessing its streams, so the lack of Flash isn't what's keeping it off the iPhone.)

    As for those free Flash games, yes they won't play directly on the device. And yes you'll need to pay a $99 Apple "toll" to join the iPhone developer program and get your app approved by the app store. But for the vast majority of Flash-like games, approval won't be a problem. And to the extent these Flash game purveyors rely on ad income, there are many games in the iPhone App Store which are distributed for free and make money through selling in-game ads. Apple takes none of that advertising revenue. It's not a big barrier, and there are a number of Flash-like games available for free through the app store.

    Finally, regarding the AT&T exclusivity, we don't know the parameters of the contract. But what we do know is that back in 2006, as Apple was designing the iPhone, the company went to multiple carriers and offered its phone on the condition that Apple would be solely responsible for the firmware and software on the phone and the carrier could not pollute it with the junk apps and restrictions popular at the time, or limit app sales to a carrier-restricted "app store". We all had cell phones like that back then. If you'll recall, this was also when Verizon would install its own custom, often-limiting software on most phones it sold. No one would play ball except Cingular/AT&T. We know Apple/AT&T deal had a multi-year exclusivity agreement, and that might have been what Apple needed to agree to in order to get its phone on AT&T's network. Thanks to Apple's efforts, of course now there are many more smartphones sold on multiple carriers without significant carrier interference (although it does appear that many if not all Android device software updates are distributed by the carriers, not directly by the device manufacturers -- talk about the "carrier mindset"!). Had AT&T and Verizon both agreed to let Apple sell its device without exclusivity requirements or carrier customizations, then we'd probably have iPhones available on more carriers now in the same way it's available on multiple carriers in many European countries. But because Verizon and other cell phone network providers were desperate to preserve their business model, Cingular was able to drive a harder bargain, and the iPhone is still restricted to AT&T.
  • Very well written response.
    re: AT&T - I agree. I initially applauded AT&T for having the courage to allow Apple to distribute without it's own software on the device. I was living in Palo Alto at the time - ground zero, Silicon Valley. I to zero bars at my house. I now live in LA - second largest DMA in the country. Zero bars. The time is over for this cozy relationship IMHO. But I recognize it's a commercial decision for the parties. Both have suffered reputation issues (and Apple I think lost market share in the long run) but this myopic decision.
    re: Flash - I don't know. I've heard all arguments. Some people I trust tell me it's economics and the technical arguments are a smoke screen. But I don't have first hand knowledge. The asset owners are pissed off because they don't want to invest in re-architecting applications.
  • I remember being on a panel at CTIA last year and causing a bit of an uproar when I said that I personally thought that iPhone apps were just a big bubble that people were blindly running to, lemming-style, and that most of the app-developer startups wouldn’t survive past 2-3 years. Of course, the startups in the audience weren’t thrilled with this, but I knew first-hand something they didn’t: just how difficult and unprofitable the AppStore environment is. The store is so flooded that discovery can be almost impossible unless you have some form of “real” marketing (i.e., marketing you pay for, not just “telling your friends about it”), and hey, that’s assuming that the mystical black-box gurus at Apple even allow your app to launch – and let’s not forget the 30% cut they take. As painful as paying 35% - 50% to the carriers is, the benefits you can get back in terms of ease of discovery [since they limit the # of apps for sale & also help with co-marketing] can actually be worth giving up that extra %.

    And for the other commenters who have hopefully cited the “fact” that users are willing to pay for mobile content --- I can show you the carcasses of a hundred ringtone/wallpaper companies from 4 years ago that were built (and died) on the same premise. The downward pricing pressure in the appstore is unbelievable and the “why should I pay for this?” mentality is unfortunately creeping in slowly but surely. ..just like it has on every other platform.

    Another point – the celebrated “ease of purchase” that caused the initial app explosion is a double-edged sword: it also makes switching to a competitor’s app virtually painless, so even if you manage to be a “flavor of the month” for a short while, the competition to keep those subscribers coming back over and over again [vital if you are betting on advertising, subscription, or micro-payment revenue] is UFC cage-match brutal.

    I can’t help but chuckle (in a bruised, broken way) when I meet starry-eyed folks telling me about their app company idea. I tell them that my previous company launched a paid app that made it to #5 in sales in the store and was in the top 20 for several months, and they ooh and aah as if though we made MILLIONS. Here’s a hint: we sure didn’t. The only non-Apple people making a profit in the immediate term in this space are the sellers of “picks and axes”, as you pointed out above. Good times.
  • Spot on, Maria!
  • Excellent blog post, Mark. I remember back in the early 90s when telcos and mobile operators were the walled garden with holes and they decided which app could appear in their store in return for a 50% cut and if you didn't like their way of doing things, you can distribute your app through the internet (the so-called hole in the walled garden). Apple appeared and offered a better cut of 30%, but they made their walled garden much better to look yet and at the same time, they also plugged the holes so that if you don't like Apple's way of doing things. Then you can't distribute your app via any other way
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: