Go through every list you guys have written about how the apple app store was innovative and new, and compare that list to what Danger created 6 years before. Almost every item on your list of praises for apple become another “me too” praise for apple.

Disclaimer: I’m a former sidekick user; now a g1 user.

The main problem with targeting platforms is the certificates. Plain and simple.
Nokia’s solution of going with Java Verified is “problematic” for small time developers. The store vendor should sign applications itself for all the appropriate customers, this is technically doable and should be pretty easy to do if the application is already signed by Verisign/Thwarte etc. (meaning there is a verifyable legal entity representing said company).

Right now getting into the “deck” for companies is a process so painful it causes startups to go out of business just because of the lengthy and painful process. Even a bad/partial solution is better than that.

Mind you, I understand the enthusiasm of startups when they get into the Apple app store. At VentureBeat we get companies telling us every week that even though they’ve got 5% iPhone users they make up 30%-70% of the actual usage of their service. Getting into the app store is a powerful emotional moment of success for startup teams. VCs, however, have all seen this effect for months and it’s old news for them. To get more funding, startups rather need to answer the question “what’s next ?” VC funding into the consumer mobile segment has decreased in the last 9 months or so. Pitches based on the app store model rarely work, from my observations.

Based on my talks at MWC I don’t see how the app store model really changes the operator business in the next 12 months. Mind you, that may be my confusion, though, as I continue to be surprised how different views on issues like this are in this industry I talked to 6 operators and they all see different things happening and all react to these things differently. Among others, there’s certainly a market for (white-labeled) app store infrastructure evolving like you say, Enrique. What I see, though, is that the business of device makers is changing. Their pitches to operators have become different, I’m told. “My device increases the sales of your data plan via apps/MSN” is becoming a winning formula for some device makers and their competition has to react. This segment of the industry will change a lot this year, imo.

Just my 2 cents.

We need more app stores to extend the concept to the vast majority of non-Apple handsets, but it will inevitably lead to fragmentation, and even when Apple introduce new models, they will start experiencing compatibility issues.

However, the most important with this “App Store” phenomenon is the fact that end-users are ready to pay for mobile applications and services. We need to go beyond the current “app store” concept where only the one-off purchase of an application is possible:
- allow micro-payment within applications
- allow subscription business model (on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis)
- extend the concept to “mobile web” services (without local application)
- …

In this context, today announcement of Zuora providing “Billing as a Service” for Facebook apps is very interesting:
http://blog.zuora.com/zblog/2009/03/monetize-facebook-apps-with-z-commerce-for-facebook-subscribe-dont-advertise.html

When it comes to billing, mobile operators have obviously a key role to play, but they need to cooperate to offer to developers a common billing gateway (developers can’t afford to integrate with billing gateways of each operator).

We’ve been defining “deck” as including app stores for a while. It’s working for us.

Keep up the good work!