Stan Beer
Saturday, 07 March 2009 12:58
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
News that
alternatives to the iPhone App Store are springing up all over will
come as welcome relief to thousands of developers who have had their
collective efforts to turn the iPhone into an open platform stymied by
a fanatical control freak of a company. The question is will Apple do the right thing by its users and shareholders and open up the iPhone platform?
With iPhones currently selling at a rate of 20 million a year -
give or take a few million - at an average unsubsidised price of
US$500, pardon me if I don't shed tears about threats to the millions
of dollars Apple skims from the earnings of its "authorised" third
party iPhone developers.
Not that there's anything wrong with
the App Store - it's great. If you happen to be a developer that wants
to conform to Apple's standards and are prepared to go through the
process of having your application accepted or rejected for the App
Store, then that's fine.
However, if you're a developer who has
spent time developing an application for the iPhone which you believe
there's a market for, regardless of what Apple says, in a free economy
why shouldn't you be allowed to sell your application through other
channels?
In fact, if other channels can give iPhone developers
a better deal than Apple then why shouldn't they be allowed to compete
vigorously for the distribution rights of those applications?
Apple
claims that it wants to maintain control over the applications that it
allows on the iPhone because it wants to maintain the quality of the
user experience. Baloney!
Most iPhone owners are big boys and
girls. If they want to install something on their iPhone - the device
they paid good money for - and it crashes the device or doesn't work
too well that's their problem. They don't need Apple looking their
shoulder like a protective nanny.
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