The Wholesale Application Community

Not-Apple mobile phone manufacturers of the world unite!

Since Apple is making a shed load of cash with it's app store, other mobile phone manufacturers are going to try to do the same thing. So everyone has rallied around this wholesale app community to try and bust off a bit of the cheddar. There's some really big names here and it might convince people that there's a future in this market, but unfortunately it's just not true.

The other mobile phones of the world are still running their long standing proprietary operating environments, which have proven profitable so aren't going anywhere in the short term. So any application is going to need to run on multiple devices with varying hardware, different development tool kits, differing development skill sets and so forth. Unless some sort of operating environment unity can be found, then the applications available here (regardless of vendor support) are going to be fragmented and disparate.

And this is really why Google created android. To try to help the mobile phone manufacturers of the world unite around a single platform. An open platform using standard technology and a unified hardware architecture. Unfortunately, company and international politics unite to mock serious competition, and we'll see a plethora of mess represented in this wholesale market.

If there could be a clearer representation to the world that mobile phone manufacturers and vendors just don't get it, I can't think of it. You can't compete with seriously inspired innovation with seriously uninspired collaboration.

What Apple is providing is inspiration. To developers, to users, to the marketplace. Devices which really are fit for purpose. Not just something that is able to achieve the functions it supports, but something readily usable for the functions it provides. The leagues of Mac developers working on the iPhone are hopeful to become wealthy from their efforts, and some will. There just aren't going to be leagues of developers willing to write software for a much smaller market segment when a larger opportunity is awaiting.

People criticize Apple for the restrictiveness of the app store, but the truth is that even with the high levels of scrutiny and restriction the iPhone is the most accessible mobile phone development platform ever sold. Over time the platform will just open up even more.

Looking at this venture makes me wonder why any company would seriously pen their name to the bottom of this list, against the likes of Google and Apple combined. Mobile phone manufacturers of the world unite? ... Mobile phone manufacturers of the world fragment.