Mobile Apps and the False War of Numbers

Mobile app developers are waging something of an ideological flame war on the message boards where such things matter:

Apple devotees tout the ubiquity of iOS-enabled iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, pointing out that because Apple’s App Store and SDK (software developers’ kit) came first, it now owns the market and like an 800-pound gorilla it gets to sit wherever it wants.

Perhaps rightly, Droid fans point out that (unlike Apple’s heavily-censored, walled-garden-where-we-skim-30%-off-your-receipts-and-don’t-let-you-tinker-with-the-firmware) Google’s open-source mobile OS will eventually dominate the market because it epitomizes freedom of development.

It’s like the old hot-rodder’s joke: Q. What happens when you put a Ford motor in a Chevy and a Chevy motor in a Ford? A. They both go faster.

In other words, both Apple and Droid fans are right: Apple has and will keep a tidy, dedicated share of the market thanks to a reasonably well-curated (and therefore reliable) platform that launched first and is hugely popular. And Google’s Droid market share will continue to boom as the SDK improves and unfettered human invention dreams up wilder and better uses for a smartphone. (Full disclosure: I hate a number of things about my otherwise-beloved iPhone 4.)

Meanwhile, the Nokia Ovi Store just made its 30,000th app available (as Nokia let slip in a Q4 earnings report) and there’s no wholesale jumping-ship happening among Nokia users dissatisfied with the app experience.

Likewise the Blackberry App World (with 17,000 apps) and Windows 7’s just-launched Apps Marketplace, which is adding 100 new apps a day to its library of (most-recently-reported) 6,500 applications – are neither going to massively win or lose the smartphone battle based on the apps numbers war but rather (I believe) on the basis of the whole-smartphone experience.

A good smartphone is a good smartphone. Quality – based solely on app availability – is just a matter of opinion.

But I won’t rely on opinion to make the point, so here is my (completely subjective and probably biased) evidence:

The way my developer colleagues and gadget-geek buddies talk about this stuff, people aren’t buying phones – even smartphones – because of the number of apps available for a particular platform. They have more mundane and practical desires at heart:

• User experience – some love crisp handling of a Blackberry’s hardware buttons. Others are comfortable with the conjurer’s-touch-with-auto-correct voodoo of a touchscreen iPhone or Droid Nexus.
• OS – some are deeply invested in Windows at an emotional or professional level – and either want to, or must for professional reasons, stick with Windows Mobile.
• Price – sure the iPhone is $200 with a data plan, but that data plan can cost $80 a month – far more than some competing platforms.
• Phone service – AT&T (the flagship iPhone carrier) has made iPhone a whipping boy over repeated dropped calls (something I’ve somehow managed to avoid)
• Hardware – high-res cameras, slide-up keyboards, excellent speakerphone functionality – these are the badges of utmost quality for some phone buyers.
• Software quality – not quantity. Some people swear by RIM’s address book, others like syncing with iCal, still others prefer Outlook.

In short, all the smartphone platforms already carry some version of the general-utility apps that the vast majority of people come to rely on (address books, maps, calendars and games). No one ever chose a phone because it had more (or fewer) fart-sound apps or a really bitchin’ version of Bejeweled.

That said – Sony-Ericsson has announced a PlayStation phone …

… and the sound you just heard was a certain three of my drooling geek buddies out in the parking lot revving up their Fords.

Or Chevies, as the case may be.

So, uh, why did you choose your particular flavor of smartphone? Drop a comment below.