After about 2 months of the App Store, Games clearly dominate the market place. From the 10 Top Paid Apps, 8 are games and the 2 remaining are in the category "Entertainment" which is really just another word for "Games". From the 10 Top Free Apps, just 2 are not either a Game or primarily of entertainment value.
It is amazing how quickly Apple can adapt to these trends. While they were trying to sell the iPhone as a productivity tool with a phone in it to corporations in June and made a big fuss about the Exchange connectivity, the new iPod touch already takes a different course as a games console with an iPod built in. My guess is that sooner than later, we will see the iPhone go the "Games Console with built in phone" way.
Which is a pity, really. Again, computing does not keep the promise of increased productivity. Far from it, it seems the customers best understand its values as a time killer. The question is: Is this a cause for or an effect of the current iPhone App Store policies and the market place parameters?
There is no easy answer to this question. Maybe consumers and customers really value entertainment much higher than productivity. Maybe there is no killer productivity app. Maybe the risks associated with investing in a productivity app for a developer is too high compared to the potential yield. Maybe the platform is not ripe for productivity apps.
There is one other area I've wanted to write about for some time: The most useful feature of the iPhone is that it is always connected to the internet. The big flaw in this is the roaming which leads to an abrupt decline in usability of the iPhone as soon as you leave the country. Which is a big problem for the (business) traveller. Sure, there is roaming, but the fees being based on data transfer volume create prohibitively large bills when you leave it on. Some people are so scared of this that they leave the iPhone at home when they travel abroad, even though it is now turned off by default.
My theory is that the dominance of the Games in the app market is both an indication of the problems of the iPhone as a productivity tool (lack of suitable applications and the roaming issue) and a consequence of the iPhone App Store concept and the eco system around it being most suitable for games developers.
Wether Apple has created the iPhone App Store to be this way purposely or wether they now make the best of it by repositioning the iPod/iPhone products range, is anybody's best guess. The fact is, being in the productivity app business for an iPhone developer is becoming a less desirable position day by day.
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Again, this looks like a jumbled bunch of ass in your RSS feed. Please fix.
I agree with the facts (obviously) but disagree with the direction of the interpretations thereof.
I think that games are most popular because it's just a much larger audience. My wife has an iphone but she's not a developer or network engineer, etc. And teenagers who have them aren't going to care about productivity apps, etc. And even developers and engineers and business people will download a game to play when they're sitting around at an airport or a doctor's office, etc.
So the pool of users who are interested in games is far greater, but that doesn't mean there aren't people interested in productivity apps.
A lot of iPhones and Touches will be sold for the capability of playing downloadable games. I wish that Apple could have made both of the devices a little thicker with added battery capacity for longer daily usage. The versatility of the iPhone makes constant usage a good thing and a bad thing. Playing games will just suck the life out of a battery and with no user replaceable battery it's just asking for too much from an iPhone.
I believe Apple is working the best it can do make the iPhone a highly useful device, but I don't see Apple moving ahead of RIM for business use. There's just too many pieces missing in the OSX Mobile OS and RIM still has strictly for business BlackBerrys that are extremely focused on productivity.
I is becoming increasingly clear Apple is not looking to the App Store to create KillerApps. Apple seems to be sending very strong messages to the contrary.
Frankly, games are easier -if it's under $4 and the game is a genre I like (driving/racing), I'll buy it or $.99 for lightshow - I've spent that on a cokie I've eaten in 4 seconds ... if I hate, no biggie but productivity apps are a different story. For instance, I'm still trying to find a sync list app where I can have some stuff private and some public and or sync/write it up on the desktop. I'm willing to pay $14.99 to $20 for this feature and I've tested out about 4 online but none offers me exactly what I want - it either doesn't sync right or it's all private or all public or it's some weird formatting ... so my guess those will take longer to sort through and a trail period would be nice ...
You miss the entire point.
The iPhone without additional software is a high productivity device. It already has the productivity applications built in:
1. Cell Phone - best of breed
2. Contact list / Address book
3. Calendar
4. E-mail - from which you can compose content for various documents.
5. Web Browser - the best, from which cloud-office apps are available.
6. Multiple-Alarm Clock - great to wake up to and for meetings.
7. World-clock, stopwatch, count-down timer.
8. Weather - great for the traveling businessman.
9. Maps - with GPS is fantastic for locating places and directions.
10. Camera - highly useful for documenting things.
11. SMS-Texting - for quick communications
12. Notes - for those quick things to jot down.
13. Stocks - for a quick look at your investments.
14. Calculator - 'nuf said.
15. iPod - great for continuing education audio and video/training.
This is a highly productive set of applications.
You cannot judge the productivity of the iPhone based on what people buy. They buy extras.
For myself, additional items:
1. Advanced Calculator - PCalc, etc.
2. Epocrates - for prescriptions
3. Trip Cubby - for mileage logging.
4. Mediquations - for medical equations
5. Ultralingua - for Spanish translations
But then not everyone needs these.
Hello,
I am aware that this ist not the right place to write this, but its important to spread this:
iPhone user starts online petition to add a button to disable the autocorrection function of the iPhone. Read more about this here:
http://www.infopirat.com/bm_iphone-user-starts-petition-disable-autocorrection-function
You miss the point. It seems Apple doesn't want third parties to control any of the killer apps for the iPhone. Apple views Adobe and Microsoft as anathemas because they control many of the most important productivity apps on the Mac platform. They don't want to repeat that situation with the iPhone platform. Apple's solution: kill the killer apps before they grow.
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