As popularity grows, some predict app store chaos is on the way
With the sales of smartphones multiplying – especially in the U.S. – mobile app stores will serve a true mass market in just a few years.
According to In-Stat, sales of smarrphones with a clear app-store focus will reach 100 million units in five years – or about 30 percent of the global smartphone market.
That could quadruple the number of app store users.
Today the most active store is run by Apple for users of its iPhone. But Research in Motion, Palm and Microsoft and others are initiating and redoubling efforts to catch up.
With the coming wave of app stores, consumers will likely face a chaotic market place over the next year or so. Many will likely be confused about where to turn to find applications for their phones with hardware providers, service providers of operating system companies running competing stores.
But the market is anticipated to iron on over time.
Research in Motion expects to unveil its App World store for Blackberry mobile applications this month, though it won’t offer a specific date.
“Very soon,” is all Senior Vice President Alan Brenner would say during an onstage interview at the 2009 Wireless Innovations conference in Silicon Valley.
Store will have quality and quantity, says Alan Brenner
What Brenner did say is that the smartphone maker expects to have both the quality and quantity of applications to attract users. He also said RIM will store applications in the cloud for users to download as often as they would like.
The use case goes like this. Suppose a user deletes an application. He or she can download it again for free. Or perhaps users have purchased more applications than they can store on their phone.
They can manage their applications in the cloud, deleting existing ones to make room for new ones and then reloading the old ones when they are through.
“We expect to have many high quality applications,” he said. “We expect to have the numbers, too.”
Most people think of a Blackberry as a business tool used most by executives and managers on the go.
Blackberry is gaining market share, says Alan Brenner
But most people might be wrong. The perception is increasingly off the mark, says Alan Brenner, senior vice president at Blackberry builder Research in Motion.
“The enterprise focus of Blackberry is really maybe an out of date image,” Brenner said at the 2009 Wireless Innovations conference in Silicon Valley.
There are about 25 million active Blackberry users, he during an onstage interview. Fifty percent are enterprise user and 50 percent are consumers.
“We are increasingly doing both” consumer and business markets, he said, adding that this focus is visible in the devices the company has recently released.
As to the pace of business, smartphones remain one bright spot in today’s dark market place. In this environment, Blackberry is gaining share, he said.
SAP has tried but with limited success to bring its core back-office software to mobile devices – the Blackberry in particular.
With workers increasingly on the go, more was obviously needed. So on Wednesday, the German software giant took hat in hand and launched a key initiative with the help of software vendor Sybase to more fully integrate its business programs with Apple’s iPhone, Research in Motion’s Blackberrys and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile phones.
SAP is going mobile as Apple finds its way into the business world
The initiative is key in several respects. For one, SAP realized it no longer could rely on in-house capabilities to expand to the mobile world, says Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.
“Part of the problem lies with SAP’s inherent engineering mentality which required it to rely on its own tools and development environment (NetWeaver) to extend its platform to the mobile device,” says Gold. “The problem is, these tools were never quite up to the task.”
Equally important is the recognition of a fundamental change in the work place – and a backhand endorsement that Apple may finally have found a toehold in the business market, with its iPhone leading the way.
Apple’s App Store has been a big hit and is being copied by RIM. It also appears to have sparked the imagination of big software makers, such as SAP.
The first step of the SAP-Sybase partnership will be limited, says Gold. Only selected capabilities of SAP’s customer relationship management software will be available on mobile devices.
Google has long had an eminently useful calendar and contact sync for Research In Motion’s Blackberry.
Google Sync already runs on the Blackberry
Enter a new appointment on your phone and, presto, it is copied on your Google Calendar.
Now the search giant is releasing a Google Sync for Apple’s iPhone and for phones using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.
There also is a contacts-only version of the software for phones that support SyncML.
Google says the products are in a beta test mode – the typical way it introduces new features.
“Once you set up Sync on your phone, it will automatically begin synchronizing your address book and calendar in the background, over-the-air,” Google said in a blog entry. “Since Sync is a two-way service, you can make changes on your phone or in your Google Account” and the other will be kept up to date.
Microsoft prepares a revamp of its mobile strategy that looks like an Apple copycat.
In a keynote at next week’s Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Microsoft’s chief plans to unveil Windows Mobile 6.5, the latest version of the company’s smartphone operating system, as well as an application store a-la iTunes and the free My Phone wireless “over the air” (OTA) synchronisation service.
However, just like for Windows Vista vs Mac OS X, Microsoft is years behind Apple in its smartphone strategy, despite its 10+ years head start, and this interim 6.5 version still pales compare to the iPhone or even the Palm Pre.
Users will have to wait next year, with the release of Windows Mobile 7 to catch up with Apple’s current generation of iPhones. By then, you can expect lots of improvements coming from the Cupertino, Calif.-company.
No wonder that Windows Mobile slid from its position as the world’s second-most popular mobile operating system a year ago to now be number four, behind Nokia’s Symbian, Apple’s OS X Mobile, and RIM’s BlackBerry. And by next year, Windows phones might slid even one more notch behind Palm’s Pre!
The Blackberry Application Storefront is the company’s response to the success Apple has had with its online Apps Store and its ability to encourage third-party application development for its iPhone.
“The market for BlackBerry applications is growing at a phenomenal rate and the application storefront will offer you the exciting opportunity to showcase you applications to millions of BlackBerry smartphone users,” the company said Monday on its Web site.
“We’re counting down to a spring launch,” the page said.
Developers can submit both consumer- and business-focused applications.
Palm's Pre smartphone is shorter than its competitors but not thinner
Looks like Palm is back innovating after a 4-years hiatus.
Today the Sunnyvale, Calif.-company announced at a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas its new Pre smartphone, along with a cool magnetic recharging dock, Touchstone.
Palm's CEO Ed Colligan is showing off the "Pre"
The Palm Pre has a nice round design that looks a bit like the HTC Touch HD but with a user interface that makes it easy to switch between applications.
I also liked how it groups the phone, email, IM and social network information making it seamless to communicate with somebody using one of the communication tools.
The smartphone has a sliding keyboard, a touchscreen, EVDO/Wi-Fi/GPS, an ARM processor (like the iPhone)… A direct competitor to Google’s G1 than the iPhone or RIM’s Blackberry Storm.
A GSM version should be unveiled next month
It will first be available in the U.S. on Sprint’s network. While a GSM version is expected later this year. Probably as soon as next month, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
Not much details on webOS – is it compatible with existing PalmOS applications? – or no word on the price which I think will not be higher than the $199 8 GB iPhone 3G
RIM's latest Blackberry Storm smartphone has been selling briskly
Palm disclosed today to Wall Street analysts that it sold 599,000 devices last quarter, down 13 percent year over year; with smartphone-only revenues reaching $171 million, down 39 percent from the year-ago period.
During that period, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company reported a net loss of $80.2 million.
At the same time today, but across the north border, RIM said it shipped approximately 6.7 million smartphones, totaling $2.25 billion in sales.
At the end of the quarter, the total BlackBerry subscriber account base increased from the prior quarter by approximately 2.6 million (~14%) to approximately 21 million.
The Canadian maker has also pointed to strong December sales driven by new smartphones such as the Blackberry Bold and its iPhone-like Storm device.
Forecasting is more difficult this year with the economy in the clutches of a deep global downturn. But here are seven technology predictions for the next 12 months from industry analyst Tim Bajarin. Barajin also included one prognosis he termed “outrageous:”
Apple will gain 2 points of share in PCs and smart phones, says Tim Bajarin
*Windows 7 from Microsoft will help bring tech out of the doldrums when it is release (as many expect) in the third quarter. Sales of PCs will be down in the first half, but could improve;
*Tech will be the first industry to recover, perhaps by the third quarter. Technology has become important to business and consumers who are employed will buy things like notebooks and HDTVs;
*Apple’s market share in PCs and smart phones will grow. The company could grow its share by 2 percentage points in 2009 – even more if it comes out with a low-cost laptop, as some expect;
*The Android software from Google will expand its reach, by next Christmas finding its way into set-top boxes, digital televisions and mobile Internet devices. Android could become an operating system in its own right and a threat to Linux;
Here is the outrageous projection:
*Microsoft will make a play to buy Research In Motion. If Apple’s iPhone makes serious inroads into the business market, Microsoft will want to enhance its enterprise position, Microsoft could then blend RIM into a service.
Windows 7 could help improve PC sales
*Netbook sales will double in 2009. Manufacturers should sell between 36 and 38 million of these low-cost more-mobile machines. Low margins will force vendors to create ecosystems of services tied to the machines to drive new revenue;
*Smart phones will gain market share. By 2012, 75 percent of phones sold in the U.S. will be smart phones. Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry will gain greater footholds domestically and in Europe;
*The unemployed will start small businesses, including professionals. PC technology and communications will likely be at their heart.
Can anyone @IBM fix the WiFi network at #IOD11 ? It's been terrible for the past 2 days and everybody I talked just can't stand it anymore 6 months ago
Posted by Mark Boslet 
