Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

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The issue isn't so much the number - I totally agree that you really don't need 500 solitaire applications in order to be a competitive platform for the user. What is important, though, is that the 15,000 to 20,000 Tier-1 Apps, and, most importantly (critically), the 1,000 or so AAA Apps are found on your platform. It's also important that the App developers show a little heart - six months in and my mother _still_ can't add her location on Path on her HTC-Desire-HD.

95% of the time, when a AAA App comes out, you can be certain that you'll have a full featured version of that application on an IOS device. That's true about 85% of the time on the Android - and it drops off a cliff immediately thereafter for the Blackberry and WP7 platform - with some Tier-1 developer who have already ported to the Blackberry starting to abandon that platform (Kayak)

Owning an Android or IOS device means, today, being reasonably certain that the App you want will be on your device.

Microsoft is showering people with money, training and hardware to make sure that will be the case for WP7. Now they just have to ship a killer phone and we'll have a horse race on our hands!

A counter-point: my fiance and her sister each recently bought a new iPhone 4S. They use them constantly all day but the only non-stock app they care about is Skype. I have a feeling there are a ton of mobile users like this that are easily satisfied by a solid foundation of Web, Email, SMS, and Facebook.

How right you are!!!

Android smartphones will continue to dominate the lowest spec hardware, especially in developing markets like China. Because the Microsoft OS cost adds to the device bill-of-materials, and Android -being open source- does not have this cost.

By analogy, its very hard to see how Microsoft will produce low-spec tablets that are cheaper than what Amazon does with the Kindle Fire - and its successor products.

Don't forget the copyright tax that most android devices have to pay. Last I read majority of manufacturers were paying this for using android.

Good point - there is clearly a spectrum of smart phone users. But, even for your fiancé and sister, "Skype" was a pretty important app - and if it hadn't been on the device they purchased, then that would have been a negative.

I spend about 2-3 hours a day on my iPad+LTE with Skype (Fewer dropped calls than trying to use my iPhone + AT&T, better quality sound) - so I appreciate the importance of Skype.

Could somebody who valued Skype on their tablet consider the Blackberry Playbook? Doing a quick google search suggests that isn't the case (as of Feb 2012).

I agree that there are some apps that any mobile platform needs to be a contender. But I really think there aren't so many of these. If you look at iOS app store sales charts it's obvious that games utterly dominate there but I really don't think that games are dealbreakers for most buyers.

I predict that apps are going to be increasingly part of some larger overall business plan and less something sold for direct profit. Big players like Facebook and Nike need native apps in the store but they also have deep enough pockets to fund ports to Android and WP. We're already seeing that Apple's dominance in the app market doesn't translate to dominance in phone sales and I think platform-specific apps are going to be even less decisive in the coming years.

I believe that apps are deal breakers in two different ways. First, for some small percentage (10%? 20%?) of the Smartphone buying community, they really want particular apps in order to be productive. Whether it's WhatsApp, Skype, Adobe Sketch, iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, Instagram, Path, etc.. - if the platform doesn't have _their_ favorite/desired/needed app, they will be unproductive/unhappy, and as such, won't chose that platform.

The second, much larger category of people, consists of those who, as you said, probably won't be inconvenienced by that missing app - but they don't want to be seen making a bad decision. These are the people who either are afraid of having purchased the "wrong" (whatever that means) device, or are worried about missing out on future benefits from their platform when developers don't roll out the AAA titles for it.

There is a reason why App developers pick and chose their platform. There is a reason why, my poor friends with Blackberry Bold's are getting almost NO application support from developers. My mother complains a little about how her HTC Desire HD lags behind my iPhone on some features or capabilities of some apps, but, nine times out of ten these days, the cool new app that I'm using on my iPhone is not (and probably never will be) available for the Blackberry.

So, the average user is actually smart to avoid these "dead end" platforms. They realize that, while there may not be a killer app that they need right now, if they truly want to enjoy the "App Ecosystem" - they need to chose a device that will get great developer support.

And right now, that is IOS first, Android Second, and, if Microsoft has anything to say about it, WP7 third.

Blackberry and Symbian are basically dead as far as App Development goes, and, as their Applications die up on the vine, their users are flocking away.

Some users see this as an opportunity, because with no competition, they have a much easier time making themselves seen, and (for the limited audience that they have), have a better chance of making revenue.

But that's from the _DEVELOPERS_ perspective. From the _USERS_ perspective, they could care less whether the individual developer is able to make a lot of money - all they care about is whether the World Class Apps are available for their platform.

I guess this is a long way of me saying I disagree with your thesis that Applications aren't critical to the success of a platform. Without the App developers, the platform will die. Microsoft realizes this.

I think what we're seeing is that there is more than one road to success in the mobile market. Apple has a lot of momentum in the app market, clearly, and most users that really care about apps buy iPhones. But a lot more people just want an upgrade for their old feature phone and buy whatever looks reasonable at the carrier's phone shop. I suspect Android is selling well to those people and probably growing market share more at the expense of the feature phone makers than at Apple's.

Microsoft's chicken & egg problem is that Apple owns the app-rich high end and Android owns the low-end so they have to find some way to squeeze in. I think they'll have at least some limited success just using their financial muscle to push their phones into shops.

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