Repost from comment by Tom Hume (mobile developer from UK)
> Whilst I don’t believe that you’re blinded by iPhone-lurve, it’s not the only game in town. There are profitable businesses running across other devices, and have been for years....
I think it's a bit of a USA vs Rest of the World thing. For the US (and specifically Silicon Valley) to suddenly wake up to the potential of mobile and then decide that they are the only game in town and nothing else of value exists is a bit off.
Indeed. There's no shortage of success stories in mobile development before Apple or Google came along, but they mostly took place a long way from Silicon Valley.
In 2004, I was working as a graphics artist for a Finnish startup that was in the business of making Java games for phones. The company had started with three founders two years earlier, and when I got there, they employed over 30 people and kept growing. They had struck deals with operators across Europe, and game sales were taking off in a serious way. (Ordinary people were buying millions of units of over-the-air distributed Java software for phones already in 2004 -- but I guess those that were successful in this market were not terribly interested in attracting competitors by making a lot of noise about it.)
The games were good enough that everybody could be proud of the work. On the best phones, the graphics and sound quality was on the level of Amiga or 386+VGA PCs. But more importantly, the games scaled down graciously to the most primitive color-screen phones with resolutions circa 128*80 pixels: thanks to a well-thought out set of APIs, an asset workflow designed for scalability and an extensive database of device capabilities, games could be easily built for dozens of devices.
I ended up leaving that job fairly quickly because I figured out I'd rather be pushing around millions of pixels on the GPU with code, rather than pushing around individual pixels in Photoshop manually. But I know the company was acquired by a large American corporation not long after, and I think the founders ended up very well rewarded for having created that rare combination of technical competence (the APIs and development process), marketing (the relationships with international operators) and artistic integrity (the games looked good and played well).
True, definitely true.
What the difference is, IMHO, that with iPhone and AppStore a single individual can develop something in relatively easy way and have a very good distribution channel. The toolchain is reasonable and Obj-C is fun (well, not fun like python but really funnier than Symbian C++, who tried it know what I mean).
Ovi Store (last time I checked) will not even accept app from individual doing development part-time, without having a company. So, for me and many many other it is a dead game.
Nokia does other very interesting things (N810 and maemo comes to mind) but Ovi store is a no brainer (at least for me). I'm talking as an european that had only Nokia phones in the last 15 years and uses an N95 as main phone (and an iPhone for apps and browsing).
Are you by any chance referring to Universomo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universomo)? One of their architects gave us a lecture on my university's course on software architecture and said that they can deliver games on over 6000 platforms.
I do some web design for a company that makes iPhone apps and he made the point to me that the biggest issue is hardware. His company is small, two developers, and they couldn't be half as productive if they needed to test for a thousand different hardware configurations. With the iPhone, you are guaranteed that there is only one or two configurations and you know exactly what they are. I imagine a lot of these companies are small groups of developers in similar situations.
Also, people with iPhones are people with money. Not a bad demographic to develop for.
Replace every instance of "iPhone" with "Macintosh" and you've also to a large degree explained the continued success of small Mac shareware houses like Panic and Delicious Monster.
I find it interesting that nowhere in that article does the author even admit that the G1/Android Market exists, considering that the Android SDK is quite excellent IMO, allowing super-easy (basically plug-and-play) development and debug testing on your own phone (no cert bullshit to deal with for testing) and from what I've seen, the Market is a pretty good place to get into now that paid apps are available...
In Q4 2008 Apple sold 4.1m iPhones (10.7% of the smartphone market), and Google is estimated to have sold 0.64m, or about 1.7% of the market.
Gartner's estimate for Google might be a bit low -- other sources claim over 1M G1 preorders -- but the conclusion is clear: Apple still claims only a fraction of the smartphone market, and Android claims a fraction of that. So it's natural that an article like this one would focus on the question of "why aren't you developing for Symbian (47% marketshare), RIM (19.5%), or Windows Mobile (12.4%)?" rather than "why aren't you developing for Android?" (which has a 2 to 4% marketshare, 20 to 40% of Apple's market.) Symbian, RIM, and Windows Mobile are the elephants in this room.
Articles like this one exist precisely because the network of potential users is already well established. The G1/Android market may exist and might be quite good, but I only know one person with one and know many with an iPhone. I find it hard to believe my experience is unique.
That's at present. But while there'll only ever be one iPhone, probably stuck on one network, Android has the potential to be available on devices of all shapes, sizes and price points.
And while at present, Android is exclusive to (the pretty poor in the UK) T-Mobile, any network can commission some Far East handset maker (HTC, Huawei etc) to make them an Android device.
Potentially, we have the situation we've had in desktop computing for years; anyone can put together a PC and stick Windows or Linux on it, only Apple can make a Mac. It'll be interesting to see which strategy wins out in mobile.
(I had a Symbian device for years. Never again. I'm waiting for Android-powered phones to become widespread then switching.)
Don't underestimate the (negative) impact hardware will have on the market for Android applications.
This isn't like the desktop computing world, where even a low-end Dell box will run most software people care about; the low end for mobile devices consists of millions of ludicrously-underpowered handsets. Telcos love these because they're incredibly cheap (see: "sign up for a family plan and get five phones free!"). But from a developer's perspective, these devices are a terrible platform: even if you write an application that can run on a low-end handset, you probably can't turn a profit from it since the prospective customer is someone who, by definition, is willing to forego useful/interesting features to save a bit of cash.
So any successful business around Android applications will probably have to target the higher end of the market. But that end of the market is:
1. At a price point -- in terms of handsets and voice/data plans -- where people start to think "if I'm already paying this much, why not just go ahead and get an iPhone?", and
2. So much smaller in terms of handset and carrier choice that the average person probably won't be swayed by arguments about handset and carrier choice.
And that's without getting into the problem of writing applications which can run across even the limited spectrum of higher-end handsets: maybe you've got a touch screen and maybe you don't, maybe you've got on-board wifi and maybe you don't, etc.
Many of my friends who own an iPhone do not care who wrote it or how the application was written - they just want to be entertained or connected.
Salient comment from Jason Devitt of SkyDeck.com (proprietor of cloud-based mirror of your mobile phone's information)
> Downloading applications for a Nokia phone is not obvious, not easy, and often no fun at all. It’s confined to people who in your words are ‘more tech-savvy’ and ‘more likely to try things out.’
>I have many friends whom I do not consider ‘tech savvy’ and who never downloaded an application for a mobile phone in their lives - until they bought an iPhone.
Nokia VP New Markets Anssi Vanjoki talking about their Ovi store. It will have a feature the iPhone App Store could use/implement.
>It’s different from other stores because of its relevance engine. It learns from your own use, the location where you are, and your interaction with your friends. You will not get tens of thousands of crap applications. You will get what is relevant to you.
> Is the Nokia store supposed to challenge Apple? Or Microsoft supposed to? Or RIM?
Yes, Nokia, MS and RIM I can be sure, are trying and will continue to try to challenge the iPhone.
I personally work for a large company that standardized on windows mobile for the sales team.
I am also sure that in time Android will be a strong competitor.
I also know many people who picked a Nokia Eseries because it's cheaper. I know for sure that my next phone won't be an iPhone. So in many way I am almost sure that Nokia is well positioned to compete with the iPhone. And that the iPhone dominance wont last for long
I have some contrary anecdotal evidence. I have seen/know dozens of people who carry their work phone (usually a blackberry). And then they carry the phone they really want along with it: the iPhone.
Windows mobile is a joke. Hardly anyone installs apps with it or uses it for anything other than a phone/calendar/contacts. Android could be strong though.
Now if only MS and SONY would let the little guy develop for their consoles (the XNA platform doesn't count). They make it so hard for an individual to acquire an SDK (firstly, you have to be a real game company). Are they making the same mistake as the big mobile players? If only Apple would enter the console market and shake things up.
> Whilst I don’t believe that you’re blinded by iPhone-lurve, it’s not the only game in town. There are profitable businesses running across other devices, and have been for years....
I think it's a bit of a USA vs Rest of the World thing. For the US (and specifically Silicon Valley) to suddenly wake up to the potential of mobile and then decide that they are the only game in town and nothing else of value exists is a bit off.