Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimbokun | Hacker News Reader

"and Angry Birds"

I bet games is the big exception here. I bet many of the "non-geeks" referenced by you and others in this thread have downloaded a few games to their iPhone, and would be much less likely to switch to a competitor that didn't have the same games or games that were just as good.

One more counter data point: at a party last Saturday in a room with a bunch of non-geek college kids, fiddling with their iPhones, one of them spontaneously asks "Hey, what's that app that can tell you the name of a song if you hold it up to the microphone?" One of the other college kids quickly confirmed that it was called Shazam.

View on HN

Don't underestimate the power games have to give a platform staying power. The prevailing sentiment in past discussions here has often been that games are interchangeable distractions, but there's a big portion of the public that is incredible passionate about their favourites and thus the platform on which they run. (We've been taken aback at the fan loyalty shown to some of our games, and this is stuff that's barely even troubled the lower reaches of the charts.)

Bingo. It is all very well to say "I and my business buddies only use 10 apps". Go have a look at a random teenager's iPhone and if they are not full of game apps I will eat my hat.

And yes there are a lot if kids with iPhones out there, either as full phones or without phone service. Where do you think all the previous generation devices are going?

In a family the app-store represents significant lock-in, both in collective $$ spent on apps and media, but also in the device hand me down chain. I bet there is a lot of pressure against one of the parents switching to an N9 all of a sudden.

Brand new smartphone users or company issues are (maybe) a different issue.

Games also tend to be the most portable and least "sticky" of all apps though. Most games are written with cross-platform engines or toolkits. If an app is a huge hit on iPhone you're likely to see it on Android not long after.

Games to tend to be the easiest to port too. They have no expectations of having the platform look & feel. Angry Birds looks the same on Android and iPhone and not even the diehards complain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com