AQA 63336's Colly Myers thinks there should be a single app store for all operators and all phones.
No one could question the success of the Apple App Store and its impact on the market. Over 100,000 apps and over two billion downloads: such figures are simply stunning and suggest that a completely new market is in the making.
Unsurprisingly, the result of Apple’s success has been a flurry of stores launched by the rest of the mobile industry. Orange, O2, Vodafone, Android, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, RIM, Palm and Nokia – they're all at it.
The problem is that none of them is really meeting the needs of the app developers, who want to address users on all operators using any mobile phone.
Java ME remains the best platform for hitting the widest possible demographic, but even then a developer would have to make it available on the O2, Orange and Vodafone App Stores at the very least. As 3 and T-Mobile do not have app stores, it would probably be necessary to do Nokia’s Ovi App Store and RIM’s App World as well.
So that would be five different submissions, and then, every time the app was updated, another five submissions. Very costly in time and effort.
However, just making your app is just the start.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan, 'it’s the marketing, stupid'. With 100,000 apps listed and typically 10 or 20 variants for every kind of product, you need marketing to persuade customers to download yours. But marketing is terrifically expensive, more so when you have to target it to five different app stores.
What developers require is a single app store providing Java ME apps that will reach all the customers of all network operators using a phone that can run Java ME. Developers would then have one marketplace from which to promote their applications, and one commercial relationship. Customers would need only to go to one location to find and download apps.
All of which would create a substantial Java ME app market that could potentially dwarf the Apple App Store.
This situation is very similar to when SMS was first available. Initially, each network operator restricted SMS traffic to its own network, because they were focused on their own requirements and not on the wider market. When SMS went across networks, it took off and has not stopped growing since.
GSM and SMS prove that mobile networks can work together. There is a great opportunity in apps. In particular we are looking to Virgin, 3, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and O2 to all get together and create a single app store for Java ME applications. That's a market of 30m to 40m in the UK alone. I don't expect it to happen overnight, but I do believe it will come eventually as the operators realise the wider benefit to them and to the industry.
* AQA has just launched its first app for the 63336 service, using Java ME. It's working on an iPhone version. More details here.
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