Microsoft’s already done a lot right with Windows Phone 7, and it’s not even due out until late this year. But after today’s announcements, there’s still one lingering question: How can Windows Phone 7 possibly catch up, in terms of apps?
To be clear, the problem is as follows: When Windows phone 7 launches later this year, it will face the same Catch-22 as any new app platform does: Without an audience to sell to, why would developers invest in creating complicated apps? And if a platform doesn’t have these great apps, why would people switch to it?
It’s something I’ve been wondering about since the day we found out that Windows Phone 7, despite a February unveiling and a March developers’ announcement, won’t actually ship until the end of this year, and which I was hoping might be cleared up today. It wasn’t.
We only have to look as far as Palm to see that getting apps off to a slow start can be severely detrimental – even fatal – to a platform. But a comparison to webOS, or even Android, doesn’t do Windows Phone 7′s situation justice. By the end of this year, the platforms WinPho 7 will be competing with – namely iPhone and Android – will be even more deeply entrenched with users than they are now. And the same goes for developers: The 30,000+ apps in the Android Market are trending skyward, and the 140,000+ apps in App Store aren’t showing any signs of slowing down, not to mention the iPad apps that are about to flood the index. Come Christmas 2010, smartphone buyers will have a choice between phones with a library of apps to do just about anything you can think of, and Windows Phone 7.
So what can Microsoft possibly do? I didn’t know, so I asked Microsoft Developer Division VP Scott Gutrie, How bring people to your platform?
It’s a lot easier to build a Windows Phone app compared to, say, an iPhone or Android App now. Ultimately developers are interested in, can I build cool apps? Is it easy? How painful is it? Can I make money?
To a degree, he’s right. Microsoft has seriously lowered the entry barriers for Windows Phone 7 app development, setting development tools free as of today, and demonstrating on stage how simple it is to create an app from scratch. (Guthrie himself created a barebones Twitter app in real real time in front of the audience.) And yeah, the launch partners announced today are pretty great.
I think this event, and this conference, hopefully catapults interest, and based on the success we’ve had in the last three weeks, in terms of getting some of these partners interested… I feel pretty confident we’re going to have a pretty wide range of apps available at launch.
And they will! But you know who else had fantastic launch partners? Palm. Gathering a bunch of high profile names on short notice is a PR coup, but it’s not a long-term salve.
The real question is, how do you lure developers away from established, surefire moneymakers, like the App Store, or increasingly, the Android Market? What do you say to an iPhone developer right now, when you don’t have a product in consumers’ hands? Joe Belfiore:
If I were sitting here face to face with an iPhone app developer now, I’d say, I think we’re worthy of consideration. I think, hopefully, if people have seen the user experience we’re building, and seen some of the reception and reaction that’s happened, with real people in the real world looking at what the story is, that at minimum, it piques their interest and says, this looks like a smartphone platform that’s going to have some degree of success.
This is Microsoft’s struggle: To convince developers that, despite a release date of late 2010, minimal hardware announcements, an entirely new platform and user experience (which most of them will not experience on hardware before launch), they should invest time and money in Windows Phone 7. They’re making the literal act of developing as simple and inviting as possible; they’re giving developers a massive lead time to develop, and get familiar with the tools; they’re garnering as much hype with the public as they can.
But what Microsoft can’t do is will Window Phone 7 handsets into the public’s hands. They’re going to have to earn that, and they’re going to need developers’ help. And as excited as they – and we – might be about this thing, the earliest we could hope for Windows Phone 7 to have the kind of app power it needs to be competitive with the smartphone giants – who, by the way, aren’t going to be sitting still for the next year – is the middle of 2011. That’s the Windows Phone 7 problem – and it’s out of Microsoft’s hands.
MDolley
March 16, 2010 at 1:27 PM
I think this post fails to take note of the fact that the App Store being so large is not necessarily a good thing for developers. Take a twitter client for example – Do I develop it for the iPhone and hope that it gets featured, and not lost among all of the other. Or Do I develop for the new platform and be one of only a few twitter clients.
Or another way to look at it
5% share of 10 million devices is 500,000
60% share of only 1 million is 600,000
Go for the platform with volume, or the one with less competition?
Report PermalinkPinball
March 16, 2010 at 1:59 PM
Will Microsoft really need 140,000 plus apps, like Apple does?
If you look at those 140,000 plus apps available for iPhone, if you break it down, there are probably maybe 1000 tools. Then there are multiple versions of that tool, with minor functionality, made by different people, which makes up the 140,00 plus apps. So you have a situation on the iPhone front where are thousands of weather apps, hundreds of rss reader apps, mutliple spreadsheet apps. As consumer it’s overwhelming, it’s like Bunning’s, where you’re presented with 25 different types of hammers. How do you know which one to choose? You don’t, you end up buying half a dozen over time, not like any, and then give up trying to find a tool to do the job. If there was only one hammer, then you would have bought and got on with it.
Report PermalinkMelektaus
March 16, 2010 at 2:05 PM
IIRC correctly the Palm Pre did not have an app store, or even an publicly available SDK, at launch, or for months after. this is not the same scenario as MS faces with WP7S;the tools are available now and MS has already showed off the app store.
Report PermalinkBy release day I expect every single iphone app worth installing will be available for WP7.
Surely one of the hardest parts of app development is coming up with the idea? The WP7 developers probably have it easy – just think of the most popular apps on the iphone store – recreate in silverlight. PROFIT!
Shane
March 16, 2010 at 2:41 PM
One of the biggest losers of the iphone must be small-medium business looking to leverage the power of the iphone (and to a lesser extent, the itouch) for in house apps.
We looked at the 2gen iphone when it first come out as a platform we could develop some in house apps on but soon found that this path was blocked to us (we only had 12 employees). Without a “personal” distribution model (the ad-hoc method is viable, but due to it’s time limit, not particularly useful) it proved to be unsuitable for our plans…many of us were switch from winMob platforms due to many usability issues.
If microsoft could provide both a market place and also a mechanism for developers to distribute their own apps, I think they could hold an edge over apple, at the very least they could entice existing winmob users to it.
The next big hurdle is whether the platform can translate to a “tablet” like the ipad.
These two features would, at the very least, peek the interest of business looking to mobilizes there data workforce.
Currently both apple and microsoft are competing the casual user market, while there is plenty of money to made in this market, business is more likely to be willing to invest long term in the tech then your spotty teenage…or middle aged geek ;)
Report PermalinkRed T-Rex
March 16, 2010 at 2:57 PM
This isn’t that hard. Microsoft have deep pockets and a lot to loose. I suggest a $1m prize in each category (e.g. games, business, social, etc.). Do this for the next couple of years with bonuses for most downloaded, most original. Some good developers will be wondering if it is worth the effort but a million bucks is a good incentive.
They also need to ensure that a ggod selection of the game makers launching XBOX games this Christmas have a mobile version or tie-in.
I think XBOX Live is the key to them making it or not. It’s one of the few things Apple cannot match.
Report PermalinkCraig
March 16, 2010 at 4:11 PM
What Microsoft brings to the table that the others lack is an ecosystem of hundred of thousands of developer who are already familiar with the basic technologies. Silverlight UX guys, XNA Indy games, they’re all already out there it’s a matter of porting.
Also combined with the fact that the underlying server technology is already in place, there will be a lot of enterprise solutions that will make the jump quite quickly.
Report PermalinkRod Rye
March 16, 2010 at 5:45 PM
The iPhone of course, started with nothing vs an established Windows Mobile base of millions of apps developed over the greater part of a decade. If that taught us anything, it’s create a great product, market the living hell out of it, and the apps will take care of themselves.
The biggest advantage Windows Phone has is that the same code can be used for the browser / desktop version, almost entirely unchanged. So many people may just decide that ‘incidentally’ the app they’re developing for the desktop will have a phone version. An iPhone app needs to be planned. The average iPhone user also only downloads 8 apps. I know I’ve downloaded hundreds, and use only about 4-5, and only 1-2 regularly, and those are all available on any platform already.
There are plenty of people for whom the platform is about the apps they need, not the apps that they will download and never use again. Apple are expecting that some people will re-buy the platform for the iPad. I would say that at that point people have every reason to have an iPad and a Windows Phone (that can act as a wireless access point) vs having an iPad and iPhone with duplicate functionality in some respects, and missing functionality in others.
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