Now everybody has an App Store

Blackberry has an appstore and has had one before Microsoft, Palm and Nokia.

http://www.blackberry.com/appworld

Do some research before you do an article!!!!

The article title really should be everybody will have a flash player, except the iPhone. The flash player on all the other smartphones will put apple behind the rest, in respect to browsing the web and quickly developing rich user experienced apps.

I'm pleased to see every ones progress with their android models as well as windows mobile UI maturity with version 6.5. Here in the US, windows mobile is doing a takeover in the smartphone game not just a makeover. For example, count the number of smartphones currently and just announced using windows mobile.

Is there anyone who can deny that android and windows mobile will be the dominant smartphone OS's, leaving the iPhone in its appropriate place, with the MAC.

@AK: I used to think that Android was the main competition, but NOT A SINGLE Android phone was announced at the World Mobile Congress. Unless Google suddenly gets into the hardware business, Android is going nowhere.

As for all the copycats: amazing that not a single one of them is capable of doing something new. What a sorry, sorry bunch.

"I think they’re getting far too complicated for the average user that can’t be bothered to troubleshoot just to make a phone call… RIM and Android will be OK, but I don’t think the others will fare as well."

@ Constable Odo,

I think you got this one right. Android will be second to Apple. RIM will survive in the enterprise world. All the others will still be around, but only to share 5-10% of the smartphone market.

Apple will only stick to that category of product. Even if they release low cost, smaller product, it'll still be a smartphone. They'll dominate that category, leaving regular cellphones to the rest.

@Gregg

Try http://www.ovi.com where the Store will be active

Get wise guys. U.S. is not the only market for phones.

As with the iPod I imagine all this competition will only manage to hold Apple's share to 60-70% of downloaded apps 5 years from now. The top competitor probably having 15-20% share. Apple will likely be the ONLY one making a sizable profit from apps – and it will be very sizable. I think we're likely to see quite a few popular very sophisticated, not-inexpensive apps that will. When added to the billions of $1-$5 apps Apple will be raking in a lot of profit.

All the announcements are SOOO funny!

Apple started their iTunes store to sell songs for iPods. They gave the iTunes software for free, to anyone, for Windows or Mac.

This is YEARS ago, and a few hundred million iPods ago. All those people know how to sync an iPod, and they have sold BILLIONS of songs to people with active accounts.

Now, the iPhone uses the same software as their ipod, and it actually also includes an iPod, and buying apps is JUST LIKE buying songs, which billions have been sold. Firmware updates are painless and always good news.

It all works, perfect as you could get within reason.

Anyone see an advantage?

Nokia for instance.

Where is this software site? Do I need a special app? can I download to the phone direct, or to my PC, or Mac, if mac is supported, will all these things sync? Do I need an account?

What's the interface like? any bugs?

questions, questions…

The AppStore with a 70/30 split doesn't make much of a profit. By setting the split at that level in the iTunes Music Store, Apple basically made it unprofitable for any other store where the store overhead was not also supported by hardware sales.

In this case, Palm, Blackberry and Nokia's stores have affiliated hardware. And Windows and Android have owners with lots of revenue from other sources, so the remaining question is how much investment will Nokia put into Symbian?

Jan/Jun 2007: Apple announces and ships a multi-touch gestures smartphone.

Feb 2008: Other companies announce touch-screen smartphones for shipment sometime later in the year.

Mar/Jul 2008: Apple announces and launches its AppStore, where every app works on the iPhone and iPhone 3G.

Feb 2009: Other companies announce app stores, some for launch later in the year, but where some apps in the store will work on some phones but not others, or the apps will only work on new phones but not older ones, or …

See the pattern? So I'll know what other companies will announce in Feb 2010 by the end of July 2009.

All these new download stores are likely to put Handango out of business. Why bother to go there if the company stores are all online now.

I think there may be a lot of disappointed people who own older devices that are not going to be able to use these downloading services or for things like games the hardware will likely be subpar.

For Apple there are only two types of iPhones and two types of iPod Touchs that all can use downloaded apps and those two variances can cause problems such as needing to reboot or crashing or whatever. I couldn't imagine the headaches you could have with a dozen different types of handsets running WinMo. I suppose everyone that can will have to upgrade to WinMo 6.5 to take advantage of downloading capabilities. I realize that smartphones are capable of doing a lot of things, but you still need them to be dependable as a standard cellphone. I think they're getting far too complicated for the average user that can't be bothered to troubleshoot just to make a phone call.

I'm very anxious to see how well all these different downloading stores work for the various companies. I think RIM and Android will be OK, but I don't think the others will fare as well.

Not only does Everyone have an App store, Microsoft just announced it'll do brick & mortar stores, too. There's some humorous speculations on how the Microsoft store will differ from Apple stores here: http://www.macworld.com/article/138831/2009/02/microsoft_store.html

(My favorite: All of the exits will have signs on them labeled 'Start'.)

ex ped: Thanks! But a slight correction. The store will have six different entrances: Starter, Basic, Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. While all six doors will lead into the same store, the Ultimate door requires a fee of US$100 for no apparent reason.

No only APPLE has an APPLE store. Microsoft and the others are tyring to copy but their investment and the products don;t lend itself to a store. Can you visualize walking into a Microsoft store… Those products are not sold that way and they don;t have the product excitmentor styles. I look forward to all those copycats… just bleeding red when they consider how much they need to invest and how little they will make in return.

This reminds me of the rush to copy iTunes and the iPod a few years ago. You have one industry leader way out in front and a pack of followers bringing up the rear way way back there. The time to enter a race is not when it's already half over. We already know who the winner is. These guys are just hoping to be able to stay in the game.

The real losers here are going to be the customers who actually go out and buy a dud like the Blackberry Storm that doesn't even have WiFi.

True to its typical behavior, Apple has studied a particular market – mobile phones – for signs of weakness. What were the signs?

Well, first, one can tell industry leaders are ripe to be overturned when they make products that have hardly advanced in a decade or more. I mean, the phones may look better and seem to offer more features, but if those features are more difficult to use, or don't work as promised, that's really not progress.

Second, existing phone manufacturers were too content to think of their products as phones only. BlackBerry is a small exception to this with the addition of e-mail. Again, the point is that Apple reset the expectation of a phone as a mobile device that is able to access the internet, download all manner of affordable and functional programming, and that also works as a well-designed phone.

And finally, with the exception of ringtones, the concept of content and software going to mobile handsets was remarkably limited before Apple came out with iPhone. What the heck was Nokia doing spending $6 BILLION on R&D in 2008, if they have only now launched an app store?

In summary, this is classic Apple. Pick an industry with complacent, lazy, overrated competitors, and wage a complete technology war that makes customers aware of what they were missing all along. They make it seem so simple.

I am a software developer. I know almost everything there is to know about mobile software development. Apple is 10-20 YEARS ahead of its competitors in terms of the code frameworks and APIs that are necessary for developers to build useful and powerful applications. These other companies can feel free to open their App Stores, but they will quickly find the software built for those stores cannot compete with what the iPhone offers.

This will be the year that everyone who was previously in the mobile game will realize platform standardization is not going to bring them back to the Good Ol' days. Just because Apple did it, doesn't mean it's for everyone. It's one of my predictions for 09 some of them will fail

http://tinycomb.com/2009/01/05/2009-predicitions-for-tech/

Also Orange…

I really wonder how the experience of downloading a movie onto you N97 is like. It's asking the cell phone network to download at least 100MB per movie – unless it's super small and low quality. Nonetheless, that's gotta be a big file for a mobile network device.

One real App store, and a bunch of wannabes. If you want to know what strategy Rimm, Palm, MSFT, Google are Nokia are using, just look at what Apple has done over the last year.

It would be incredibly funny, if it weren't already sad and pathetic.

Iphone is the only phone. Apple is dominating.