There's so much news right now about mobile applications and stores, it feels like time to take stock.

When iPhone launched and I got my greedy mitts on a jailbroken Shiny from the US, one of the things I liked most about it was the dodgy "installer" app which the kind man who jailbroke it for me put there. At the time it definitely felt like the best experience I'd had of downloading and installing third-party mobile applications, and Apple have gone on to improve on it with their official Application Store.

Conventional wisdom had been that users don't download mobile apps, a generalisation which flies in the face of our experience; we know we've had well in excess of 750,000 downloads of apps incorporating our Cactus UI library to date, plus the installations we're unable to track ourselves. And our experience isn't unique. But there's definitely been some problems taking owners of conventional smartphones through the process of downloading and installing an application:

1. Text into a shortcode
2. Receive a WAP Push or text message
3. Find it, open it, click on the link
4. Ignore the warning that you might go online
5. Pray your mobile phone has correct connection settings
6. Go online, wondering how much this is costing you
7. Find out your phone isn't supported (whatever that means)
8. Wonder what all the fuss is about

So... application downloads to date have been by customers who are educated enough, driven enough or persistent enough to deal with this infernal procedure.

Just one more thing...

I love the mobile web. It's getting better every year as devices and networks improve, it's still got a long way to go, and it's the most cost-effective means of getting a mobile service launched.

But isn't it strange that Apple are getting massive success selling applications via a an application itself - that they're not selling and distributing iPhone apps via the web, either on the device or through iTunes? And it looks like Google are taking the same tack.

Isn't this a pretty strong endorsement of application as a route to online content, rather than the web? And isn't the success Apple has enjoyed with their application store testament to the fact that even in situations where the web might provide a perfectly serviceable experience (such as e-commerce), applications are a better route to take? Not that I'm suggesting we don't need to wait and see on this one, or that there won't be problems down the line as the quantity of content available via these stores increases.

Comments

[James]

But this is like being amazed at how many people in the 90s got their software by peeling sticky CD-ROMs off the front of subsidised computing magazines. (Or from the ISPs who posted them through every letterbox in the western world).

And users (who still clung to the familiarity of CD-shaped and paper media) seemed perfectly happy with that.

Anyway, the web in the mid-90s just wasn't up to allowing the seamless and easy downloading of apps. Piecing together base-64 encoded messages from Usenet to get new screensavers?

Now we don't think twice about downloading an application from the web. Or, wait. Maybe we do! Because the web has evolved so much that everything's through the browser anyway. (Even Microsoft Office - one of the few CD-ROMs left in the rack)

Of course I know the nature of the apps and services will be very different on mobile from their non-mobile cousins.

But I have no reason to believe that the evolution of the delivery channel (and its economics) will turn out too differently in 5-10 years.

We're just in 1997, that's all.

[Tom Hume]

So James: do you think the use of native apps for the Google Android Marketplace, iPhone App Store and iTunes store, as opposed to web sites, is a temporary step towards their being web-based?

I find it strange and interesting that two companies who are so adept at using the web, and who have complete control over the platforms they're deploying to (iPhone and Android), choose not to produce these key revenue-generating applications using web technologies - at the same time as promoting web technologies themselves to their developer communities.

This doesn't mean that *everyone* can, should or will do the same of course - I'm not drawing any conclusions like "mobile web is dead, apps are the future" from it (though re-reading my original post I did veer in that direction - whoops).

[James]

I wonder whether it's all about the infamous kill-switches.

The ability to disable a malevolent app would be harder if the original delivery medium had been a browser-initiated download, perhaps.

Personally I'm not shocked or upset by kill-switches (wouldn't you do the same, if you made phones or ran networks?) - but it's certainly telco-thinking applied to a web context.

(NB you need a 'notify me of further comments' feature ;-) )

[martin]

Apple have both web app and native app download centres, but as you say, the native application is proving to be a runaway winner....I wonder whether Google will also release a dedicated web app store to complement their Android market place ?