Why More Choices is Not Always a Good Thing
The mobile application business has been exploding for the 2-3 few years. The iPhone is certainly part of the reason, but the explosion of smart phones in general means we now have a ton of little apps and widgets running on our phones. These apps allow us to check the starting time of our movie at the theater and the next bus route or maybe just relax for a few minutes by playing a little game on the go. The phones we have, be it a Blackberry, an Android-based phone, an iPhone or a Windows Mobile phone are incredibly powerful.
And while that’s all good, as a mobile application developer (my first iPhone app, Tarot : Guide de vie is now live on the iTunes Store), it seems clear to me why Apple has been dominating so far : standardization. While there’s an ever increasing number of different iPhone and iPod Touch models out there, by and large, they are very similar. RAM and CPU speed have both been upgraded, but the screen size, the buttons on the device, the OS and API features are fairly stable and consistent and as a developer, that’s important.
If I develop for the Blackberry, which devices do I target? Some of them have a physical keyboard and some don’t. Screen sizes vary a lot. Same for Android really and while it can be argued that choice is a good thing for end users, in this case, I believe a lack of choice is also a benefit. Most apps are developed by a very small team. If I’m doing a game or an app by myself or with a few friends, chances are we won’t have 25 different devices to test it with. With the iPhone OS platform, it’s still important to test on many devices if possible, but you can target pretty much anyone running a given OS version with most apps (unless you app is highly CPU or RAM intensive).
The benefits of a closed platform is something that is rarely talked about. It’s easy to say that more choice is a great thing for consumers and certainly Google Voice users who can’t use the iPhone app because Apple said no have a good reason to be upset but as with most things in life, it’s rarely all white or all black. While there are without a doubt several downsides to a closed platform, there’s also several good things about it. So far, Apple has bet on the closed platform model and it’s hard to argue that perhaps they are right in saying the benefits outweighs the downsides. The results are certainly there to back them up.
It’ll be interesting to see where the market will go in the next few years.