Again, what is the iPhone app store doing that Palm didn't do before? There was a thriving app market. While it was web based (as opposed to device based), normal every day people bought millions of dollars in apps every year. I cut my teeth in that market at Quickoffice (who has translated that experience onto the iPhone today). While Palm was at its peak we would do 7 figures in sales.
What Apple did that other cell phone competitors (particularly Symbian) absolutely failed to do was make the app buying process seamless. For Palm users it was drop dead simple. Download the file, double click, and sync the device. On Symbian devices it was a mess of menus, disclaimers, and other crap that made installing stuff generally suck. It looked and felt like installing a big software package on Windows. The iPhone certainly deserves credit for fixing that.
Still, so much of what the iPhone has done was improve on what the folks at Palm did years ago. You can find examples of touch based interfaces (snappermail springs to mind) on the old Palm devices. Palm sported app-centric data with no exposed file system. Many of the design conceits of the iPhone first resided on Palm devices. It's part of the reason that I chuckle every time Jobs rants about how everyone is trying to steal from 'him'.
That said, there is one thing that I think is truly revolutionary about the iPhone app market. The advent of truly useful (and effective) mobile ad networks changes the game quite a bit. Being able to monetize free apps is huge. One of our app developers here in Colorado has actually seen their ad-supported titles surpass their app-store purchases which is interesting (and they sell a LOT of product). We didn't have that in the old days... it would have been really nice:) Both Google and Apple are bringing interactive ads to their respective platforms, so they clearly 'get it'.
In todays marketplace Apple clearly doesn't have a monopoly on the app market. The Android app store is a worthy competitor. It's easy to find apps (although I wish the 'top *' categories would rotate MUCH faster). They install seamlessly. You can find all the information you need in store. I really am not sure how it's really any different than the iPhone experience...
says that annual PDA sales peaked at 13.2 million in 2001, then slid for several years, then picked up again. That's all things called a "PDA", which obviously includes a bunch of Blackberries, Windows CE gadgets, etc. Palm had only 17% market share in 2005. So assume that Palm was moving about 20% of those 13.2M units in 2001. That's 2.64 million. Round it up to 3 million units per year. [1]
Apple moved 8.75 million iPhones and nearly 11 million iPods (many of which were iPod Touch units) last quarter:
Which is to say: Apple is selling iPhone OS hardware at a rate at least 11 times larger, and probably more than 20 times larger, than Palm ever sold PDAs.
(And this is just counting Apple products. The OP's point about App Stores applies to Android as well. iPhone plus Android equals Palm times, say, fifty.)
This is the OP's point: Palm may have pioneered the market and sold a bunch of software, but Apple, and its Android-based follow-on products, have grown the market by orders of magnitude.
---
[1] On the one hand, the fact that my lame Google-searched sales stats stop in 2005 is a problem. Palm sold stuff after 2005. On the other hand, my impression was that Palm was also becoming a phone company around that time. Anyone with better data is welcome to show it.
> I really am not sure how it's really any different than the iPhone experience...
A few opinions:
* The iPhone UI looks so much better than the Android one. Yes, users care about such details. It's all part of their overall experience.
* The responsiveness of the iPhone is unparalleled. This has an impact on the experience users have when they run apps.
* iPhone users can generally count on a certain level of quality from approved apps. Android users don't have the same luxury. As a result, Android users may feel less inclined to explore and install new commercial apps (if the risk of wasting money is greater). This issue may be partially resolved by their refund policy, but still, no one likes having to deal with refunds.
* The online Android Market only lists a few apps. Sure, you can browse all of them from your handset, but it's an annoying limitation. I can't even see the price of these top applications showcased online.
* People from many countries cannot purchase applications from the Android Market. Only developers from a handful of countries can publish applications on the Android Market. As a Canadian developer, I'm not able to. So much for the open device (yeah, I could sell them outside of the Android Market but that's a pretty huge disadvantage).
My experience with Android is purely in the form of my HTC incredible. I get that we're talking about pretty subjective things here:)
* UI appearance: I think the new HTC sense looks and feels on par with my iPhone 3GS. It's attractive and intuitive. My wife actually finds it be far superior for her tastes.
* Responsiveness: This is less subjective. Android running on the snapdragon is VERY responsive, certainly on par with the iPhone. I have played with a buddies original Droid. It definitely has some general lag to it. The difference between my phone and his is night and day.
* Quality of apps: Seriously?:) The app store is filled with 180,000 apps. 179,000 of them are complete crap. I've owned an iPhone since day 1... fart apps, picture of the day apps. I bought a fitness tracker a couple of months ago that crashed constantly and barely worked. Apple is not hand auditing applications. It's random at best. The auditing process is a content-control not quality-control. Among the apps that I actually use, I find the quality to be quite high on Android as well. There are bad apps and there are very good ones (weatherbug on Android is actually much nicer in my opinion).
* Android market: I guess I've never considered this. I've actually never even looked at apps using desktop iTunes. 100% of my app purchases have been on-device. I think this really comes down to the philosophy of the platforms. Google is building a self-contained pone-in-the-cloud. Apple still sees the iPhone as a bit more of a computer satellite (like Palm, but far less tethered I imagine).
* Countries: Ya.. that's definitely lame. I assume it's going to change soon. I would hope at least. You definitely have a fair gripe here (and I'm sure it colors some of your opinions a bit?;> )
normal every day people bought millions of dollars in apps every year
I would contend that few "normal every day" people bought Palm products. The iPhone has had far more mainstream success (as the numbers from mechanical_fish attest). That's a big difference, both in the type and number of people now buying independent apps.
What Apple did that other cell phone competitors (particularly Symbian) absolutely failed to do was make the app buying process seamless. For Palm users it was drop dead simple. Download the file, double click, and sync the device. On Symbian devices it was a mess of menus, disclaimers, and other crap that made installing stuff generally suck. It looked and felt like installing a big software package on Windows. The iPhone certainly deserves credit for fixing that.
Still, so much of what the iPhone has done was improve on what the folks at Palm did years ago. You can find examples of touch based interfaces (snappermail springs to mind) on the old Palm devices. Palm sported app-centric data with no exposed file system. Many of the design conceits of the iPhone first resided on Palm devices. It's part of the reason that I chuckle every time Jobs rants about how everyone is trying to steal from 'him'.
That said, there is one thing that I think is truly revolutionary about the iPhone app market. The advent of truly useful (and effective) mobile ad networks changes the game quite a bit. Being able to monetize free apps is huge. One of our app developers here in Colorado has actually seen their ad-supported titles surpass their app-store purchases which is interesting (and they sell a LOT of product). We didn't have that in the old days... it would have been really nice:) Both Google and Apple are bringing interactive ads to their respective platforms, so they clearly 'get it'.
In todays marketplace Apple clearly doesn't have a monopoly on the app market. The Android app store is a worthy competitor. It's easy to find apps (although I wish the 'top *' categories would rotate MUCH faster). They install seamlessly. You can find all the information you need in store. I really am not sure how it's really any different than the iPhone experience...