Is the business of Making Native Apps for Mobile Devices Dying?
Michael Mace has published a new editorial on his Mobile Opportunity blog. The fascinating piece is less editorial and more of an up-to-the-minute analysis of the ailing mobile software industry from the perspective of a seasoned mobile tech executive. Long-time Palm watchers will recognize Mr. Mace as the former CCO and VP of Product Planning at Palm, Inc. as well as VP of Strategic Marketing at PalmSource and director of Mac Platform Marketing at Apple.
While I highly recommend anyone with even a passing interest to not only the Palm-conomy but the wireless industry in general read the full piece, Mr. Mace’s summary analysis is that he feels the influence of the carriers is choking what little momentum native mobile apps possessed in the halcyon days of the late 1990s and early 2000s. In short, Mr. Mace advocates any remaining mobile developer to move to web-based services due to the myriad of competing carriers, numerous semi-interoperable standards, and a glut of feuding OSes.
A major portion of the article contains a compelling summary by Elia Freedman, CEO of Infinity Softworks (giving consent to Michael Mace to present this information) of the difficulties facing mobile software developer in today’s market. Infinity Softworks will most likely be familiar to long-term Palm OS users via their superb PowerOne calculator app that was regularly bundled with nearly all new devices from Palm in the earlier part of this decade. Mr. Freedman has now decided to exit the mobile software business based on the overwhelming obstacles facing developers in the carrier-dominated age of today.
“The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices. The problems are so bad that the mobile web, despite its many technical drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new functionality to mobiles.”
While Mace does touch upon his time at Palm, he unfortunately does not go into a great amount of detail about product or carrier-specific discussions, aside from pointing out the brief flurry of “unofficial” activity surrounding the iPhone after its launch last year. Also discussed by Mr. Freedman via Mr. Mace is the downfall of the retail market, the encroaching greed of online resellers, the disappearance of the major freeware web sites (definitely more of an affliction of the Palm OS market than any other mobile platform) and even the crackdown on “backdoor” bundling with select hardware partners by the carriers.
A recent, tangible example of the trend in carrier-sourced, carrier-approved “trialware” can be found on both GSM and CDMA versions of the new Palm Centro. This device ships with a hodge-podge of various AT&T and Sprint-approved software and subscription-based services that cannot be deleted from the devices’ ROM even if the user has no desire to use these applications or services. AT&T has even gone so far as to remove the streaming audio feature from the bundled version of Pocket Tunes Deluxe, neutering the “Deluxe” bundled version into a shell of the same program found on Sprint’s version of the Centro or available to registered users of the app. While not as brazen as Sprint and AT&T, Verizon continues to ship their Palm OS Treos with Palm’s VersaMail CD on the bundled software CD, clogging the device’s ROM with their own Wireless Sync e-mail solution.
For anyone still clinging to the outdated opinion that the mobile computing market is just a pocket-sized of the desktop market, this Mobile Opportunity piece is certain to be an opinion-changer.
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RE: So, does anyone still think...
Besides, if the new Palm OS is good enough, open enough and rich enough it will draw developers to it and a new ecosystem will grow around it that might even be better than the old one which has be beaten up and bloodied beyond recognition.
In the Spirit of Umoja,
Ronin
RE: So, does anyone still think...
Yet, they have to put a lot of effort into building the best developer relationships compared to any other device - easy-to-use over-the-air application store with no commissions would be a great start...
RE: So, does anyone still think...
> on that topic...
We'll see in a few months!
I think the lack of SOLID words about this from Palm tells the story, however.
RE: So, does anyone still think...
Palm is in the process of circling the wagons with a few dozen of "big name" developers still supporting Garnet. When they came out with this new orange logo "Designed for Palm Products" initiative last year I thought they were crazy and it was waaaay too late to try and get anyone on board the Palm OS bandwagon. But now I think that this is an easy way of saying "well guys, sorry to tell you this but only "certified" apps bearing this official seal of approval will run under Nova"
And, the best part of it, is that no one will lose sleep trying to get DocsToGo 8.x running under Nova because we all know there will be a new version released to coincide with Nova. What the long-time (5-10+ years) Palm OS users need/want is backwards compatibility with custom software solutions for their business or a handy old freeware app that hasn''t been updated in years or to run a program whose developer has long since closed up shop or abandoned the market.
I think Palm will be spectacularly pleased if Nova is compatible with, say, 20-30% of the installed base of Palm OS programs on the market. Sort of like Sonh & Microsoft''s seldom-if-ever-updated list of a select number of PS2 & Xbox games that run on the software backwards compatibility modes of the PS3 and XBox 360.
https://pdn.palm.com/regac/pdn/index.jsp
At any rate, I think keeping 2-3 Garnet devices in production to run the legacy programs might just end up being a better solution overall for Palm.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Verizon Treo 700P-->Verizon 755p
Great article
It's a sad state of affairs though. Which ever way you look at it, native apps on a mobile device are superior. They have access to native hardware (scanners, blue tooth, printers, etc), and fast local storage. What does someone relying on their mobile phone for work do when all their productivity apps are web based and the connection drops?
What say you PIC people? Any insights?
RE: Great article
I am not even remotely interested in the notion of having access to my data at the mercy of some third-party. I am even less interested in the notion of when and where I can have access to my apps at the mercy of a carrier and signal strength.
In the Spirit of Umoja,
Ronin
the masses don't want no native apps
mobile email/SMS, mobile word/excel, and mobile Google accomplish 99.9999% of what they want to do.
RE: the masses don't want no native apps
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/quote-william-f-buckley-jr/
RE: the masses don't want no native apps
a brilliant and prolific writer. RIP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.#Bibliography
RE: the masses don't want no native apps
Even if there was, I don't want to have to pay 2X what I pay now for unlimited data on my cell plan just so I can do what I already do now with my Palm and native apps for no monthly fee.
Anyone who things wireless apps will take over is utterly clueless.
RE: the masses don't want no native apps
And here's a clip of Android running webkit, quake, and google street view on a nice 320x480-ish mobile reference device:
Not dying... evolving
Mobile devices are basically small computers. They really don't need a completely different OS and completely different applications with completely unique codebases
Look at at Ubuntu Mobile - http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/15876/new_details_emerge_on_ubuntu_mobile
To give device manufacturers and application developers more control, Ubuntu Mobile allows custom users interfaces to be developed in HTML, Flash, Clutter, Python, GTK, C/C++, GTK and Java. It also offers full AJAX fidelity for Web 2.0 applications.System requirements for Ubuntu mobile include an Intel Silverthorne processor, 256MB of RAM,and 2GB or more of flash or hard drive space. Although it will eventually see a public release in 2008, right now Canonical is courting manufacturers with pre-release versions of the system for upcoming mobile devices.
It was suicide
We'll see how dead the market is when the iPod touch SDK is released.
RE: It was suicide
Fast forward a year or two. Joe replaces that device with a Treo/Centro/other smartphone. Joe is of fairly modest means and is now getting clobbered with at least $50/month in service charges (usually more). He doesn't have that disposble income to drop on buying apps/games every month. So, naturally, everyone (PocketGear, Handango, the PIC etc etc) feels the pinch.
**********************************************
Palm's beloved Treo-centric lineup is a one-trick pony if I've ever seen it.
The sorts of people who buy PDAs are also the sorts of people who buy/try/download/pay for lots of mobile apps. When I went from a TX to a Treo, I cut back drastically on my gaming (less RAM + the lame SSS) as well as trying new software out of fear of sending my Treo into an endless reset loop and losing my mission-critical phone in the process. Of course, since I stopped using my Treo as a telephone that solved that problem nicely.
Between the constricting market, utter lack of compelling new hardware, improved software bundles from Palm, the misery of Garnet and the iron fist of the carriers, it's no wonder the market is in shambles. And for every Astraware or Hobbyist Software you have someone like Dataviz that tries to nickel and dime their customers at every possible opportunity ("download insurance" etc). DTG 8 & PTunes Standard still shipping on the Verizon 755p? A device that was released AFTER the Sprint Centro that comes with DTG 10 & PTunes Deluxe standard? AT&T crippling PTunes on their version of the Centro to try and sell the ridiculous XM streaming service? More and more apps being tied to the hardware ID of a device and being indifferent to paying customers who have had to replace devices due to faulty hardware and can no longer register the program they bought (here's lookin' at ya, TomTom!)
And a MOUNTAIN of blame can be placed directly at the feet of Palm for not overhauling the Palm Desktop YEARS ago to include some kind of mini-browser with the capability integrated to painlessly do one-click software downloads & installs. Heck, when I saw the Treo 650 released with a pitiful amount of available RAM I figured it was some master plan of Palm's to squeeze the life out of not only the PDA market but the mobile Palm OS software market as well.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Verizon Treo 700P-->Verizon 755p
RE: It was suicide
i know a lot of "joe six-packs" and a several "joe champagnes" that bought/were given mobile devices. none of them ever downloaded any software. we are the minority. and i only have a few apps left on my treo myself. could i live without them? sure, easily. do i use them much anymore? nope. it's just like my laptop - most people (including me) use what came with the computer - that's it.
mobile apps are a tiny small niche market relative to the number of devices out there. the growth demand of third-party mobile apps DID NOT/WILL NOT scale up proportionately with the growth in mobile smartphones.
let me repeat that -
the growth demand of third-party mobile apps DID NOT/WILL NOT scale up proportionately with the growth in mobile smartphones.
Nah
Second, once they finally do download something, installing and managing said app is even more clunky, due to the complete lack of consistency in the process. And if you want to go uninstalling anything, it all has to be done on the device itself with all the limitations that entails - small screen, fiddly input etc. So not only is it difficult to find good apps, it's a pain in the bum to manage them as well.
Is anyone really surprised most people don't bother?
Neither of the above two points is difficult to fix. Indeed, Apple might be about to do just that: if they choose to distribute iPhone apps through iTunes, and the (now late?) SDK actually goes open up the iPhone good and proper, then we'll see whether or not native mobile software has a future.
There are many, many good reasons for carriers and hardware vendors to encourage exclusive native apps, the most appealing of which is that they just may come to rely on one of them and then you have a customer for life. Look at the rabid game console market as an example: you currently have three expensive machines competing largely on the strength of their exclusive games. Many of those are published by the manufacturer themselves, but each also has exclusive third-party hits. I don't think the mobile software is poised to die so much as become consolidated into groups of major vendors.
The fact is that there are just too many different ways for people to live their lives for any one set of built-in software to ever satisfy everyone. Wireless coverage is too damn unreliable and likely will be that way for decades to come: web applications are not the answer. Native software has always had a place and it always will. It's just that nobody has capitalised on it properly yet. Not even the pioneers at Palm.
Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680
RE: Nah
'They' should read 'consumers'. stupid brain.
RE: Nah
PDA's Past and Present:
Palm TX (Number 2)
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22, UX50
Casio-EM500
Apple - MP110, MP2000, MP2100
RE: Nah
What I love about my PDA (TX at the moment) is that it is a standalone mini computer in my pocket on which I can choose apps to install and can use it any time, any where. That is of no interest to the telco carriers; they don't make a cent off of me when I use native apps or my own network to browse the web or get email. If they could somehow get me to do all my mobile computing "through" them, they'd start making real money from me. And it of course won't hurt them at all that all of the apps and all of the data is on the web and thus only accessible through their "much slower than native apps" connection.
It's one thing for me to be sitting at my desk with my always-connected computer and go to some website to do a conversion of length from feet to centimeters. It's another thing for me to be able to do that while I'm standing on site somewhere on my TX with Unit Converter Pro without having to wait to connect to anything or pay anybody for that connection time. When I think of the number of different apps I use in an average day, I can only reach one conclusion: I want native apps on my handheld device.
So I'm hoping Mace is wrong and David Beers is right:
"So, the market got saturated with all the old kinds of apps people used to buy for their PDAs. So, there are more operating systems out there than you can shake a stick at. Are we not technologists? If the difficulties you list are big enough to stop what I see as the coming Golden Age of mobile software from happening and force us all back to the browser, which has no concept of the user's physical environment aside from what they poke into it, then it's not native software that's dead: it's innovation itself." (quote from his comment)
"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)
RE: Nah
For most of us devs, I don't think it is lazyness or the urge for a quick buck (though obviously there are those elements for many.) Making an application fully compatible across even the T|X and the Treos is a difficult thing -- even some of the OS built in applications fail to do it properly (!!). Factor in history .. different development APIs for Sony, Handera, multiple for Palm, and all the many other brands out there. We end up having to build the resize-for-virtual-grafitti code 6 or 7 different ways, all in one application. Likewise for the jogdial, 5-way, and so on. It was not managed well, so in the end the code is difficult to maintain and grow, and very difficult (sometimes impossible) to do right. (Then factor in the fact the official development tools, CodeWarrior, have been out of production for years and the new tools mis-aimed at OS6 and so forth.. the devs do not have it easy. Its about as hostile as it gets, which is one of the issues Michael Mace brought up.)
The near-constant is 320x320 (or 160x160), so most go with it.
jeff
The Shadow knows!
No surprise
The only viable market left for mobile apps is the iPhone. Oddly, it will be successful for many of the same reasons Palm was successful: to fix some of the inherent flaws in the system. And I'm sure we'll see our old friends at Splash Data make a series of apps for the iPhone.
forest for the trees ... or vice versa
For a while, developers held on. There was an announced path from Palm OS 4 to Palm OS 6. Palm was also heavily active in the Java 2 Microedition effort for the CDC platform which also looked sufficient for multiplatform PDA development. It was an exciting time, anticipation was high.
What happened? The Palm OS stagnated and Java CDC lost probably its biggest market when Palm dropped participation in that working group as well.
Six years later with the iPhone/iPod touch SDK and Google's Android, it looks like the idea of exciting development platforms may be coming to fruition. I'd say that the new day of "native" (more like non-web based, or device hosted) mobile apps is just beginning!
Also, I'd suggest that his idea of a web-app based business model for your typical low-budget mobile app developer is somewhat flawed. The business model for a device hosted app is rather simple, a developer just needs to provide a license key system, allow users to pay, say via PayPal for the software, and make copies of the software available on popular download sites (usually for free). A web-app based system is far more complex. You're required to keep a reliable web server up at all times, and might be responsible cost-wise for your site's bandwidth if it becomes popular. You become responsible for people's data that is stored on the server ad infinitum. I'm not sure what the donation/pay frequency rate is on freeware/shareware apps, but if you give away a device hosted app, there are no real costs on the developer ... it's quite a different story if you're hosting a website for non-paying users, a subscription-based model is far more likely. Also, at least in what I'm seeing for the iPhone/iPod touch, some sites are already customizing their content for specific mobile devices ... so the idea that you're going to write a web-app once be done with it isn't quite right either.
Anyhow, I think with the iPhone and Android, we're about to see a rejuvenation of the device hosted mobile software market. That will trickle down to the lower-cost devices with time and consumer demand. Much like everything with Palm ... Michael Mace's opinion piece is a few years too late. Mobile web apps are last year's news ... if you aren't already doing it, you may have already missed out.
Could your timing have been more precise on the news of Palm.
show details Feb 27 (1 day ago) Reply
Dear Customer/Beta Tester,
This was an extremely difficult decision for us, but certainly a critical one that we had to make. Our most recent development efforts, namely LineUp and Saguaro, relied primarily on the success of Palm. You’ve most likely heard about the struggling Palm OS economy. Unfortunately, it’s affecting us as well in ways we never could have predicted.
We’ve poured our hearts into making both LineUp and Saguaro and agonized over every last detail in both the code and design. During development, if a portion of our code wasn’t exactly right, we’d redo it to perfection. We’re that fanatical about our software. But when it comes right down to it - we’re a team of entrepreneurs, programmers and designers that have to eat, too.
Many thanks go to all of our fans and customers who have supported us throughout our development. We’re sorry to say that after six successful years, we have to go. We’re sure there are many more opportunities that will present themselves in the future. So don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. Chances are, someday you might find each of us out in unique industries doing what we love most – innovating.
Best Regards,
The Team @ PDA Performance
RE: Could your timing have been more precise on the news of Palm.
emulator
Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
And given the vast river of money that flows through the iTunes store on a daily basis, which developer wouldn't want to hop on the gravy train?
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
- if your app. is FREE - then you get charged nothing.
- The 30% (as per apple) is used to pay for hosting, deploying, and marketing the app. - They probably pull a percentage of that as pure profit...
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
Also:
2.) the SDK seems designed to be powerful, easy to use, and widely accessible. That seems intended to create as broad a base of development as possible.
3.) There''s a 100 million dollar fund being set up to support iPhone development.
I wonder if those three things don''t change the article''s outlook? Certainly Google, Microsoft, Palm etc. will have to adjust and try to create similar development eco-systems around Android, WinMob, and Nova. Otherwise in a year or so the iPhone will have a vast ocean of applications (what Palm regards as one of its primary advantages).
I would think the bar is raised and the small developer just got a big boost.
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
Oh for fek''s sake. It was by Michael Mace. The guy who thought the Foleo was as significant an intro -- if not moreso! -- than the original Mac.
PUH-LEEZE!
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
Quote for sure double quote - double quote "
Quoted apostrophe - it'll
Visually in my Firefox the first line's original is a double quote while the copy quoted is actually TWO apostrophes
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
RE: Apple says Developers get 70% for selling their iPhone apps
Frikkin-A. It's only in the line I quoted.
But now that I've copy&pasted it - it's done it double!
Yeesh.
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