How Many Apps Will There Be In iPhone App Store?
The iPhone App Store launch is now imminent, which begs the question - how many third-party applications will be available for iPhone? It’s difficult to say. What we know is that there have been hundreds of thousands of downloads of the iPhone SDK; and that there have been 1700 proposals put into Kleiner-Perkins for VC funding of iPhone apps from the iFund.
So, does that mean there will be between 1,700 and 300,000 third-party applications available for iPhone within the next few months? It would be impressive if there were…
Asam Bashir wrote:
Should see lots of quality apps produced by big software houses that have been working with Apple, but after official opening, it will take a few months for the rest of the applications that are available now for jail broken devices to move over to official distribution.
Think 1,700 - 300,000 is far to high a number going from number of apps available with installer on jail broken devices - 100 official apps to start with, then a few thousand over the next months would be a good start. On Mac it’s never been about quantity, it’s more about quality. Like 90% of Windows apps would be rubbish, but on Mac side that would be more like 10% apps. Don’t expect to see a model like Java, where 99% applications are rubbish and 1 % are actually useful and get used regularly and not just installed for a day then forgotten about….
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 5:51 pm ¶
simon wrote:
I think it will be interesting to see how the ecosystem develops. For example, what proportion of the apps in the App Store will be zero cost? How many will be premium priced? etc.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 7:19 pm ¶
Roger Nolan wrote:
Where did you get the 17000 figure from? I’ve not seen much information on the iFund progress at all.
You should also remember that each developer will have downloaded the SDK multiple times (there have been several bears, not to mention new installs, multiple downloads per devshop etc.
On top of this, most of the apps - especially the larger ones that need venture funding will not be finished when the App Store launches.
Note that it is KPCB managing the iFund, not Sequoia.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 8:26 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
You’ll also see free apps that can be upgraded to pro versions, a very common model for many excellent and successful Mac OS X apps. Lot of examples of very high quality apps using this model in jail broken installer apps…
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 8:33 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Roger, it’s 1,700 not 17,000. You’re right, of course about the VC group… it’s Kleiner-Perkins - I’ll edit it. Don’t know why I wrote Sequoia!
It was KP that said they’d had over 1700 requests for funding iPhone apps. They have decided to fund two so far (well, one was a already an investment before the iFund started), and are apparently looking at another ten. More on the ones they’ve funded here:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/tc20080526_465550.htm
Very few of the apps in App Store will be suitable for VC funding. I expect the number of applications KP has had reflects that most of the developers just don’t understand venture capital.
You’re right that there will be multiple downloads per person, per company. It’s Apple that’s promoted the 300,000 SDK downloads as being a meaningful number, not me
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 8:37 pm ¶
simon wrote:
@Asam, yes - that’s another interesting category of app. Mac users have, I think, historically been better at paying for small apps that have PC users.
Posted 05 Jun 2008 at 8:46 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Flash and Silverlight, but no Java,
3G/OS X iPhone 2.0 specific patent:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080122796&OS=20080122796&RS=20080122796
“[0779]In some embodiments, user interfaces 4000A-4000F include the following elements, or a subset or superset thereof: [0780]402, 404, 406, 3902, 3906, 3910, 3912, 3918, 3920, 3922, as described above; [0781]inline multimedia content 4002, such as QuickTime content (4002-1), Windows Media content (4002-2), or Flash content (4002-3); “
Posted 06 Jun 2008 at 1:14 am ¶
simon wrote:
As described in the patent, it looks on the surface to be a bit crippled. That is, it seems to be concerned with enabling playing of multimedia content (e.g. video), rather than enabling Safari to properly deal with RIAs.
Posted 06 Jun 2008 at 9:35 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Yeah, think this is part of Apple disinformation strategy before announcements on Monday, building up the publicity hype machine - lot of confusion already created by exact form-factor as there are rumours of 2.8″ screen vs 3.2″.
In above patent,
“[0142]Examples of other applications 136 that may be stored in memory 102 include other word processing applications, JAVA-enabled applications, encryption, digital rights management, voice recognition, and voice replicatione. ”
Not sure iPhone 2.0 has processor powerful enough for voice recognition, though it does depend on engine used..
Posted 06 Jun 2008 at 3:31 pm ¶