The App Business Blog

The other smartphone vendors who have been working like crazy to catch up with Apple ever since the original introduction of the iPhone, were set back another year today with Apple’s preview of iPhone OS 3.0.

Some of the other touch-like phones currently available are actually not bad phones in themselves. But any smartphone today is compared with the iPhone, and that’s where they fall down. Palm who has recently gained some attention and interest for their Pre, will now face off with the iPhone 3.0 at their launch in June. You have probably already forgotten the shortcomings of the first iPhone software release. I can’t think of any smartphone vendor who has hit it out of the park with their 1.0 release. Now Apple has had two years and the help of 30 million customers to refine their software. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.” Right.

Other blogs have covered the 100 new features of 3.0, so I will not rehash that information. And the 1,000 new API:s are covered by the NDA, so I can’t discuss them either. But I would like to emphasize the new business models. These changes are HUGE.

The initial App Store model only allowed single apps to be purchased for a one-time fee. This led to the proliferation of books as apps, and apps where it would be natural to purchase additional content but that was verboten. (We actually implemented mobile content purchases for iWallpaper, but Apple rejected it.) When asked at the time, Apple plainly stated that they did not have a solution for other business models.

Now they do. In spades.

• The ability to purchase content separately from the app. Suddenly ebook readers on the iPhone make a whole lot more sense.
• Subscription billing. Get continued access to a service (games, enterprise services), or receive new content on a regular basis (magazines, videos).
• Make purchases from within applications. This feature alone probably added another $1B to the App Store business for Apple.

You have already seen a lot of content made available in the form of iPhone apps for the sole reason that you can easily charge money for it; unlike the web in general where everything is expected to be free. With these changes Apple will become the largest seller of digital products of all types. If you can digitize it, it will soon be available for sale in the App Store. (And why limit the store to iPhone clients? Sell information products for any computer. Notice that it’s not called the iPhone Store…)

Competitors have been scrambling to launch App Store clones, with one of the larger alternatives having just barely put payments in place. (Although, handling micropayments from mobile devices in 77 countries should not be belittled.) Now Apple lapped them again.

I’ll let other people continue to whine that “there really wasn’t that much unexpected” and that this was “Really pretty minor stuff“. You’ll have to excuse me, I have a dozen new apps to write that just became possible. And a few new business models to explore. This is going to be just as much fun as last year when the SDK was brand new!

written by Nick

I’m always appreciative of other bloggers and web sites who link to this site, so when I see a new referral URL in the logs, I typically check it out.

This time it turned out to be a well written report about iPhone business opportunities, and iPhoneIncubator.com is mentioned as a good source of information for SDK developers. Thanks for the link Kisky!

You can download the free report at http://theamazingiphone.com/

written by Nick

I have a great idea for a new iHouse. This is relovutionary; nobody has every thought of this idea before. Now I just need to pardner with a very solid iHouse builder to make this realty. I come up with the ideas, you bring the expertise!

You must have at least 2+ years of experience with building iHouses, dealing with Mapple’s approval processess and selling on the Hip Store. Please send me all examples of relevant, prior work so that I can try them out for free.

This is a very simple house. For an experienced iHouse developer this project should only take a few days hours to compete. So I’m being extensively generous in offering to share the guaranteed-to-come future profits with you: 50/50.

This iHouse idea is so super extraordinary that you need to be prepared sign tripplicate NADA and non-complete contract.

If you are good and professional I will email you back.

—

It cracks me up each time I see these messages on Craigslist and other message boards. The above was aggregated from actual posts. A few minor edits were made to protect the innocent. Now back to our regular scheduled program.

written by Nick \\ tags: humor

Push API

The push API that was announced at WWDC ’08, and scheduled to be live in September 2008, will finally debut in 2009.

Side prediction: There will be per-message fees associated with the push service.

MobileMe API

An API that was hinted at during WWDC ’08 to allow programmatic access to your data in MobileMe will be introduced.

I can’t think of a better way to lock in users to the iPhone/Apple world than an API to MobileMe. This will allow iPhone apps to really use and integrate deeply with your calendar and other features of MobileMe.

More APIs

Apple will release more official APIs that allow developers to access more features of the iPhone, e.g. SMS, Bluetooth, video recording, iTunes music, the phone itself.

Much of Apple’s marketing depends on being the purveyor of the coolest gadgets. So Apple cannot afford to see the most innovative mobile apps to be developed only for other competing platforms. 

No Major Hardware Releases

Developers are just beginning to understand the iPhone and we are starting to see some innovative apps. Fragmenting the platform with new form factors at this point would be bad. Ask any J2ME developer how much fun it is to play the “write once, test everywhere” game.

Better App Store

The organization of the App Store will be vastly improved with more categories, better keyword search, top lists that are not completely tilted towards $0.99 apps.

Reusing the iTunes infrastructure for the App Store was a stroke of genius, and probably necessary to launch the App Store in the given timeline. But now it’s clear that apps and music have diverging characteristics: 

• You typically don’t search for music to meet a specific need. 
• Pricing.
• For music, audiobooks and video, iTunes is just one of many distribution channels.

More App Store Commerce

Apple will introduce more commerce options for the App Store, e.g. subscriptions and separate billing for content.

The proliferation of ebooks as separate apps that clutter up the App Store and your iPhone home screen, could easily be avoided if there was a way to charge for content separately from apps. Add the ability to sell subscriptions or other means for developers to get recurring revenue, and we’ll see some really innovative apps and business models in the App Store.

No Trials

Probably the App Store feature most requested by developers of serious/expensive apps is to allow for free trials. I predict that this wish will not be fulfilled in 2009.

There should not be any major technical reasons preventing free trial versions of apps since FairPlay DRM already supports rentals that expire after a set time. My guess is that it’s a business decision and Apple makes too much money from “regretware”. It would be very interesting to be a fly on the wall at Apple during the discussions of revenue vs. a better quality App Store. Personally I hope I’m wrong in this prediction. 
 

What are your iPhone predictions for 2009?

written by Nick \\ tags: predictions

This has been all over the iPhone developer community today. I just wanted to add my two cheers. Expect much more frequent posts here on this blog.

written by Nick

The App Store has finally launched. It’s available in iTunes 7.7 and from 2.0 iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Out of the 552 applications that are available today, I managed to get 4 applications listed. That’s almost 1% mindshare; not bad. And I have 5 more apps waiting for Apple’s review.

These are all applications that I have developed for clients:

written by Nick \\ tags: App Store

There is an iPhoneDevCamp in NYC this weekend. Looks like a good un-conference event, so if you’re in the area, check it out. Sponsored by Socialight who are doing interesting things on mobile phones, and are apparently busy working on an iPhone version.

written by Nick \\ tags: iPhoneDevCamp, Socialight

In light of yesterday’s “announcements” and rumors about the 3G iPhone, it’s good to remind yourself that there will eventually be new iPhones with different properties and capabilities than the current generation.

Developing for the iPhone is great because it’s a single platform. If you have ever tried to adapt a J2ME application for dozens of different phones, you know how painful that is. But don’t take the “single platform” idea too far and assume things like screen size.

Always ask the device about it’s capabilities and dimensions. For example, [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds] will give you the size of the screen your application can work with. Don’t hardcode 320 x 480 pixels. A good way to test your UI is to allow it to rotate between portrait and landscape mode. If the UI can handle that without breaking or looking distorted, it will probably adapt to other screen sizes as well.

Going back to the 3G example, how would you know if an iPhone is 3G connected to a 3G network? There is nothing specific to 3G in the current API. There is a kSCNetworkReachabilityFlagsIsWWAN flag in SCNetworkReachability which is defined as “EDGE, GPRS, or other cell connection”. That could include 3G. But since there is a significant speed difference between EDGE and 3G it would be nice if Apple added another flag specifically for 3G reachability.

Another possibility is the UIDevice class, and specifically it’s model property. Currently this contains “iPhone” or “iPod Touch”. An “iPhone 3G” model string would make it pretty clear that a phone is 3G capable. But that’s a pretty crude way of describing capabilities. And it puts the onus on each application to map device names to specific capabilities. When you think about all the different iPod models you realize that this will get out of hand pretty quickly.

What we really need is a new capabilities API or framework where an application can query the device for specific information such as screen size, RAM size, network capabilities, etc.

written by Nick \\ tags: 3G, SCNetworkReachability, UIDevice, UIScreen

An interesting quantum mechanics effect makes it possible for some lucky owners of the current generation iPhone to connect to high-speed 3G networks today.

Hubert Hochsztapler, a researcher at the institute for nano-technology at The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, discovered back in 2004 that old GSM cellphones could be used as 3G phones using the quantum tunneling phenomenon.

Would it work on the iPhone?

The iPhone was not tested by Hubert Hochsztapler and his colleagues, but our own lab reports today confirm that most current iPhones are already 3G capable. No new hardware is required.

The iPhone contains an accelerometer which measures minute movements of the iPhone. This turns out to be a great benefit to achieving the 3G capability. But due to interference from the accelerometer when it’s inactive, you first need to open an application on the iPhone that makes use of the accelerometer. The Safari browser is an excellent choice, since it will also allow you to visibly enjoy the effects of the faster data connection provided by 3G.

First turn the iPhone from portrait mode to landscape mode, back and forth a couple of times to ensure that the accelerometer is engaged and working. You should see the display change between portrait and landscape mode. Now start downloading a very large web page and simultaneously begin shaking the iPhone lightly along its y-axis. Think of the iPhone as the yoke of an aircraft. You want to avoid pitching and rolling the iPhone as you’re shaking it.

If you hit the right shaking-frequency (41 Hz seems to be optimal), the electrons in the iPhone will reach their tunnel state and the radio transmitter will “tunnel-up” and connect to the AT&T 3G network in your area (if one is available).

Impact on Apple’s stock price?

A Gartner analyst recently reported that Apple has already placed an order for 10 million units of the new 3G iPhone from their manufacturers in Asia. But when current iPhone owners discover that their iPhone already is 3G capable, they will not upgrade as Steve Jobs has decreed they should. This will effectively turn Apple’s 10M order into one big iBrickload of phones, says April F. Olson, an analyst covering the AAPL stock for Hochs Securities.

It doesn’t work with all firmwares

This technical trick has been confirmed to work only on non-jailbroken 1.1.4 firmware phones (also known as the 4.1 release in the U.S.).

Please report your success with your “new” 3G iPhone in the comments below.

written by Nick \\ tags: humor

Today is March 14th (3/14 in American date format) which has a striking similarity to an approximation of the mathematical constant pi (3.14159265…)

Therefore math geeks are of course celebrating Pi Day today.

written by Nick