Thoughts on the App Store

All this talk about Apple arbitrarily removing applications from their app store at their leisure made me wonder if the backlash will provide the opportunity for – lets say Android OS – to take over as the primary application market choice for developers.

See, the problem with the iPhone app store at the moment isn’t with the software, or the hardware. It is the closed nature of the platform and marketplace.

From the outset Apple has decided to place restrictions on the iPhone as a platform. Initially, by calling web applications viewed in the browser what they are: applications. Sounds great, but the browser had no API hooks into the cool features of the phone, like the accelerometer, camera, gps and contacts database, essentially making 3rd party apps second-class citizens when compared to Apple’s native apps.

The initial disappointment was as huge as you would expect. At the time,  every platform on the market had native application development and at the very least Java or BREW support. Interesting to note is the reaction of the developer community – they revealed just how essential a market for applications on the iPhone was, by creating their own native application browser for Jailbroken phones. The first apps were released using Installer.app (the original homebrew app browser) before any official app store was announced.

Apple needed to have their own marketplace for the iPhone. The end product? The App Store.

After a year of waiting, the App Store is released with much fanfare. It is fast, reasonably easy to get your apps published and the demand for new apps was enormous. The rules for getting on the store weren’t that bad either – nothing offensive, just don’t duplicate anything that’s already on the phone, don’t use any unpublished APIs. Pretty simple right? Well, no.. not really.

As the last week has shown, the reality of getting your apps published on the App Store isn’t so simple. The reasons for applications being rejected from the app store could be anything – from an offensive word or picture to the reviewer just not liking your app. Rulings aren’t particularly consistent either, with Apple accepting Google’s search application which utilized an unpublished API hook in their voice search.

Closed platforms hurt developers. Especially when you can’t be sure if your hard work is going to be accepted into the marketplace. It makes me wonder if spending the time developing for the iPhone is really the right thing to do when there are other platforms out there that are showing massive growth and don’t restrict what you can do as a developer.

For now though, the App Store is the biggest, and the best. For how long? It’s hard to say. Android is the underdog right now, however with it’s advantages and potential for larger market penetration it will start make a dent on Apple’s dominance. Nokia and RIM’s marketplaces are also live, and LG and Microsoft have released details of their upcoming stores.

With all this competition on the horizon, a comparison to Myspace comes to mind. Complete monopoly of the market, seemingly unstoppable growth and a huge following.. eventually beaten by a better, more open product. Time will tell if the App Store will go this way – regardless, it’s a good time to be a mobile developer.