Much of the reason for the continuing excitement about smartphones
and tablets is due to the availability of free and inexpensive apps,
small programs that let users customize their gadgets, adding games;
travel, restaurant and movie guides; and even business tools.
Apple's App
Store is the biggest source of apps. It lists more than 200,000 for
the company's iPhone, iPad, and iPod
touch devices. Google's Android Market is coming up fast,
with some 70,000 apps for that growing smartphone platform.
A lack of apps - and a failure to get developers involved - helped
doom Palm's otherwise promising WebOS platform,* leading to the
company's purchase by HP.
While still in the lead in sales, the relative lack of apps for
RIM's BlackBerry phones is a sign of that platform's stagnation.
Microsoft, with its Windows Phone 7
platform still unreleased, has promised a free phone to every Microsoft
employee - perhaps to encourage the company's developers to build apps
for it in their spare time.
I count 55 apps installed on my iPad.
The Problem with Apps
Still, there's a problem with apps.
With so many apps, if you're a developer, how do you let people know
about your product? And if you're a person with a smartphone or tablet,
how do you find the best apps to match your needs and desires?
Vancouverite Tim
Bray is best-known as a creator of XML (extensible markup language)
for standardizing data so that it can be shared between computers. He's
worked with Digital Equipment, Sun Microsystems, Vancouver startup
Antarctica Systems, and more. Currently, he's a "developer advocate"
focusing on Android at Google.
Despite the Google job title, in his blog, he
recently suggested that neither Android Market nor Apple's App
Store (nor any one else) is doing a good job of helping users sort
through the thousands of available apps.
Bray recognizes that it's not an easy task. He compares the
onslaught of new apps coming to the stores to "a firehose", calling it
"mind-boggling, overwhelming, terrifying" - but notes that as sci-fi
author Theodore Sturgeon once suggested (in another context), almost
everything is crap.
He contrasts these app stores to online retailer Amazon.com.
Expanding beyond books to sell music, video, garden tools, and more,
Amazon stocks far more items than any of the app stores. Bray notes,
however, that Amazon helps potential customers with detailed and expert
reviews.
Amazon has an advantage, he recognizes, in that customers are often
looking for brand names or products by specific artists or performers.
High profile brands are almost completely missing from the app
stores.
While both Apple's and Google's stores let users rate apps, the
ratings tend to be less helpful than Amazon's. Too often, they're very
high or very low without apparent reason. And Bray points out that
there's a "first-mover advantage" to the first reasonably competent app
in any particular category, making it hard for later competitors - even
with better designed apps - to gain attention, reviews, or market
share.
Apple's App Store has some advantages over its Google equivalent;
users can browse Apple's listings on their Mac or Windows PC, while
Android users have only slower (and perhaps expensive) browsing on the
small screens of their phones. Further, each App Store entry gets its
own web page, making them Google-searchable, unlike Android Market
apps.
While Apple has taken some heat for controlling what gets listed in
its store, that offers at least a minimal level of quality control
compared with Google's more unsupervised market.
Two Resources
Bray recommends the Appsfire website, which promises to help users "discover
and share the greatest apps," while a blog reader suggested MIMVI, a search engine for mobile apps,
content, and products.
Bray suggests that these sites more reflect the extent of the
problem than offer a solution.
The app phenomenon is still young. Apple's App Store opened in
mid-2008. While Bray notes "it's a mess," he's hopeful a solution will
arise. In the meantime, be aware that having tens of thousands
(Android) or hundreds of thousands (Apple) of apps is less of an
advantage if there's no easy way to find the handful that you really
want. 
First published in Business in
Vancouver, August 10 - 16, 2010, issue #1085.
