“Though almost every discussion at the MobileBeat conference in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Thursday centered around the iPhone, venture capitalists told mobile entrepreneurs to broaden their focus and build applications for all phones. Still, all anyone wanted to talk about was the Apple App Store, from which users have downloaded 30 million applications for the iPhone this month,” Claire Cain Mlller reports or The New York Times.
“Startups should ‘intelligently hedge their bets across multiple platforms,’ advised Richard Wong of Accel Partners. His firm has invested in mobile games and application site GetJar, ‘the store for the other 3 billion phones that aren’t iPhones,’ as Mr. Wong put it,” Mlller reports.
MacDailyNews Take: In other words, the store for underpowered devices with tiny screens, indecipherable user interfaces and no built-in iPods, most of which are incapable of running anything more taxing than a contacts list; iPhone also-rans, wannabes, and worse. No wonder developers don’t care about them.
Mlller continues, “”Rick Segal of Blackberry Partners Fund and JLA Ventures reminded developers that the iPhone only accounts for a tiny share of the worldwide market… ‘You must think multi-platform,’ he said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Blackberry Partners Fund = Me Too Joke (Related: Hot on the heels of their fake iPhone, RIM launches fake iFund – May 12, 2008)
Mlller continues, “Some investors insisted that multiple mobile platforms–whether Apple’s, Google’s, Research in Motion’s or others–will thrive. Matt Murphy, head of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ $100 million iFund, said most entrepreneurs who pitch him have iPhone applications, but that the platform war ‘is not a winner-take-all game.’ David Sokolic of Battery Ventures disagrees. He predicts a shakeout akin to the PC market and Microsoft’s Windows, with a clear leader emerging.”
“So what’s a mobile startup to do? One solution: launch new features and applications on the iPhone, then push them out to other types of phones if customers like them,” Miller reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “lumi” for the heads up.]
Bet this is called “marketing”: first you choose to build stuff for the strongest “Trend” of the moment… and its name is iPhone, by now…
Sounds like RIm and those folks are really already starting the defensive tactics. Must be afraid of the juggernaut heading their direction.
Beleaguered anyone??
Sounds like the wong guy pushing the wong stuff to the wong people.
This appears to be a reverse Windows scenario where Apple now becomes the dominant player.
iPhone bitch!
Sure, “multiple platforms will thrive”, but only when they all produce something the majority of people find easy to use, and when the emphasis is more obviously on what the user wants, not what some corporation somewhere wants. Even ‘enterprise’ users are humans first and foremost, and when it’s possible, they will choose something that they feel is their own, not just a company shackle.
And HD-DVD was going to be the Format that killed Blu-Ray. HD-DVD players outsold Blu-Ray but in the end Software numbers when Blu-Ray so HD-DVD died. The iPhone and Apps Store keeps given/selling customers the Apps in one trackable location while RIM, MS and Android keep stumbling around in the dark customer’s are going to keep flocking to the iPhone faster then Apple can pump them out, the iPhone Platform will be bigger then then the rest combined and when you toss in the iPod touch platform the numbers will swell to a mountain the size of Everest to overcome. Nokia should go back to making cheap dumb phones before they invest too much in smart phones.
When they first sold automobiles, plenty of people still recommended investing in buggy whip manufacturing.
Since the Blackberry is so widely accepted as the choice for business customers (for now), and one big reason they don’t like handing employees iPhones is because of the amount of non-work related features it has (games, music, movies, etc.)…
Wouldn’t it hurt RIM if developers started to create all sorts of downloadable games and such for the Blackberry? It would turn the Blackberry into a crappy iPhone, and hurt RIM’s “business edge”.
With consumers flocking to the iPhone, pushing IT departments to support the iPhone, etc., it seems that RIM is damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Lot’s of games and apps get made for Blackberry: RIM = Damned if they do.
Nobody develops much new for the Blackberry and consumers continue to buy iPhones (and wonder why the hell their IT dept. won’t active their email!): RIM = Damned if they don’t.
“He predicts a shakeout akin to the PC market and Microsoft’s Windows, with a clear leader emerging.”
“Leader”? More like the Godfather making an offer you’d better not refuse. Refuse? There’s a word and a half for Windows.
“One solution: launch new features and applications on the iPhone, then push them out to other types of phones if customers like them”
I can live with that.
Sure, there may be 3 billion other phones out there, but how many of their owners will actually pay for software for that phone? My guess is that iPhone owners are far more likely to pay for software for thier iPhones than a WinMo or RIM user.
“When they first sold automobiles, plenty of people still recommended investing in buggy whip manufacturing.”
Those people were visionaries. They anticipated the burgeoning S & M industry. My grandfather got in on that. He was a kinky old dude.
Who cares about the rest of them – here’s a need trick if you haven’t tried it. When you click on the camera button to take a picture, instead of holding the phone stead, start twisting it right away. You photo will end up twisted and warped, like a Salvador Dali painting. Neat.
Stupid iPhone Trick,
It’s similar to ‘camera tossing’. Google it. Here is one site.
http://photojojo.com/content/inspiration/camera-tossing/
“launch new features and applications on the iPhone, then push them out to other types of phones if customers like them”
Sounds like a M$ formula for “success” – let Apple launch new features and applications on the Mac, then push our own version down the throats of customers and scream loud and long that we came up with it first and tell more blatant lies to the media.
Yeah, that sounds like it.
@Macintosh,
I think the corporate world likes Crackberrys because the device ensures that the user will not be spending any time playing games – they are too busy trying to get the damn things to work right!
My girlfriend just got a Crackberry Pearl a few weeks ago. It is wonky as hell! No preferences will “stick” – they change themselves to other settings or reset to the default whenever they damn well please. Also, that scroll ball is annoying as hell, and it won’t show her text messages sometimes and missed calls at all! It actually did show the missed calls for the first 2 weeks and then mysteriously stopped last week.
Wonky.
But MDN
Where’s those 4 words, and video
We love to hear, and watch ?
D E V E L O P E R S
D E V E L O P E R S
D E V E L O P E R S
D E V E L O P E R S
BC
*You.must.think.multiplatform*….
Theyre.telling.everyone.how.afraid.they.are.of.the.iPhone.when.they.start.telling.people.*How.to.think*!
(My.keyboard.done.broke!!)
Oh, sorry
That’s right
We do have children in the audience
And others with weak stomachs
My bad, b
So a developer is supposed to develop for the iPhone, and then dumb down the app for other platforms? Right.
Isn’t Apple predicting over 40 million iPhones to be sold worldwide in 2009? That’s a pretty good number of potential users, and a hefty chunk of the smart phone market.
Wait until Apple release the NanoTouch….very cool.
The day is coming when the IS guy/gal starts taking orders from their clients instead of demeaning them. For too long now, the Server Monks have had a tight grip on the balls of the organization.
These guys have no problemo getting into bed with M$ and getting their “needs” taken care of. All they have to do in return in keep M$ products in place and they will send their retarded stepson (the dull compooters rep) around once a quarter for your reach-around.
Once macs are in place in the majority, a kinder, less micro-penised IT infrastructure will emerge.
For those “analysts” who are concerned so much about iPhone market share, I guess the name iPod touch means nothing to them. With a single update, all iPod touch can run all iPhone apps that do not use the telephone and GPS functions and all current iPod touch sold can already do so out of the box. The App Store won’t be that big a success without iPod touch owners downloading apps too.
@ Cubert:
Same w/ me. My girlfriend has a Crackberry her work gave her and I was playing with it… Horrible. She has an iPhone that she loves, and she hasn’t turned the Crackberry on since I played with it.
She keeps meaning to give it back, but it’s just sitting collecting dust (seriously… It’s all dusty).