Last week, Apple announced that more than 500 million apps were downloaded in the App Store. There are over 15,000 available apps to choose from.
Most articles about this chose to deal with the quality of these applications (like here and here). I want to remind you of something else. When Apple began shipping its' iPhone SDK there was a lot of racket. We are at enlightened times of open source and transparency and along comes Apple with its' closed platform and malicious NDAs. What were they thinking?
The app store is the only way to get apps on to the iPhone (unless you hack your device), but publishing your apps there is not a walk in the park. The process is complex and it undergoes rigorous screening. If you do get there, they share your profits, which are not that big to begin with since the apps are really cheap.
Seems like they had all the reasons to fail. Yet, they didn't.
You know what? It's obvious to me why. From the same reason the iPod is such a huge success to begin with. Sexy UI with a complete, end-to-end amazingly simple user experience.
But that's not the reason I wrote this post. I wrote this post because there's a lesson here. Even in these enlightened times closed, proprietary platforms will succeed. Because the end user doesn't care. The developer cares. But she cares more about getting paid.
