Apple Store - 10 million downloads in just 3 days (who said local apps are RIP?) It is about ease of discovery.
Update Jul-22: Apple Says 25 Million IPhone Apps Downloaded (in 11 days). Wow…
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Apple Inc. (AAPL) said iPhone owners has downloaded 25 million copies of software programs for the phone in about 11 days, which it sees as a significant benefit for future iPhone sales.
William Volk wrote at ForxumOfxord the following:
It took over 70 days for the original iPhone to hit the 1m mark. The 3G did this in 3 days.
iPhone 3G at one million sold and counting, App Store hits 10 million downloads
Even with the glitches with activation (I had to return to the store on Saturday to get the phone due to these issues) it sold 1m.
The bigger news is that the iTunes Apps Store saw 10m downloads over the weekend.
Awesome, 10 million downloads, in just 3 days.
I (and others) knew it all along, and proves the point I we have been making again and again and arguing for a long time: that people WILL download applications, if the problem w/ downloading (i.e. discovery) is solved. (Of course, the app must be useful to begin with) — see iPhone SDK, the App Store, the iPhone on the Enterprise.
And Local applications are not RIP, as many have argued… For those non-believers, here is the proof.
Apple solved it, and everyone is happy… Andriod MUST solve it, if they want to be successful w.r.t. local apps. Java ME doesn’t have a solution to this, and that is a problem. And Mobile Widgets also need a discovery solution. Ease of discovery must always be part of the mobile solution: being it a search box, an icon on the home page of the handset, a mobile widget, or side-loading…
That said, the next level of mobile applications will be based on Web Runtimes (for example, the OMTP Bondi initiative); the hybrid platform that will provide for web-based applications with occasionally connected behavior support and access to the device’s local functions.
We are experiencing a wonderful transformation in a relatively short amount of time, on what mobile applications are and should be. Think about all of this as phases and gaps to deal with during this evolutionary transformation of what the true personal computing platform of the future will be.
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Last year we saw that apple ignited the fire on the touchscreen phone in the USA, now it brings the appstore. It is changing the way a phone should be. Nice post.
I think Apple iphone solve the problem in discovery of different solutions.This 3G iphone has its own search box, an icon on the home page of the handset, a mobile widget, or side-loading…
Hi Kiran! In defense on Mike Mace’s “Mobile Apps: RIP”, we should remember that his main argument was that the (lack of) direct distribution channels were the biggest issue, and Apple seems to have solved it by removing the middleman, which was another Mike Mace’s suggestion a couple of years ago. I’m actually worried about how many of these 10M apps are actually bringing revenue to their developers though, as people love downloading when it’s free. May be advertising will be the solution for the revenue problem.
Anyway, all this is great news, we can only hope that this is not an isolated move and that other innovative mobile platforms such as Android will follow Apple. Mobile apps stores ON THE PHONE rock!
I read Mace’s article too, and I don’t think that was his argument. His argument was based on comments from a friend, that local apps are RIP.
ceo