RIM Launches Apps Store and Apple gets tough on Jailbreakers

Research In Motion's BlackBerry App World made launched on Wednesday, offering downloads of its initial stock of 1,000 applications. App stores were lifted into the top popularity draw with Apple's App Store for the iPhone. Now every device maker has one, is planning one or is in the cold.

Among the applications currently available are MySpace, Facebook, Salesforce CRM , AOL , Yahoo and Windows Live Messengers and much more.

Surprisingly, not all apps today are free and many users are spending money on getting their Apps. ABI Research found that 16.5% of their recent survey of smartphone users spent between US$100 and $499 on applications on their devices! So there is money for the right App.

Other Apps stores include ‘The Android Marketplace’ for the G1 phone and Nokia with Microsoft coming rather late to the party, but offering up a significant market with its mobile operating system’s penetration when it does come.

However, all is not plain sailing and Apple is taking a tougher stance on what developers can and cannot do with the development kit. Developers have to sign an agreement if they want to create content for Apple's App Store and most developers have complied. Apple now have added a few new clauses to the latest version of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. This now clearly prohibits "jailbreaking" a device, helping to jailbreak, or distributing apps in ways other than the App Store. Jailbreaking enables users to run apps in the background, change the home screen theme, and record video with the camera. Whilst the new clause is unlikely to stop iPhone developers who want to break it, it will make developers wary of the jailbreaking community because they risk being cut off from the App Store. It also give Apple a tighter control on who does what and where the revenue goes.

Amazon to Sell Online Mobile Rentals??

Last week literary agent, broadcaster and industry insider Peter Cox questioned whether Google would introduce an ebook reader to further monopolize its new position at the center of the emerging digital book world. Our response was that they had this covered already in their Android and could easily make Google Book Search a standard Android feature.

So what of Amazon with its Kindle 2 sitting on the launch pad and expecting to fly in the New Year? Has the Kindle 2 release been delayed for commercial, technical or strategic reasons? Why would Amazon miss out on the Christmas season sales?

Perhaps the answer is down to a change in strategy. Perhaps the explosion of smartphone applications has fired a shot across their bow and woken them up to the fact that maybe; just maybe, the kindle isn’t and never will be sexy or cover all the bases. No matter how many Ophra endorsements are given it’s still a clunky device which will find it hard justify the consumer investment. Maybe Amazon has realized that if there is a significant mobile swing and the world goes online as opposed to offline they are in a better position than anybody to take that market, or at least go head to head with the potentially biggest ebook retailer – Google.

Let’s step back and look at potential Amazonian moves. These may be far from the reality of what happens but they could happen:

Amazon introduces a Kindle mobile application for the major mobile platforms.
Amazon promotes an online book service based on their mobi format.
Amazon smartens up the Kindle reader and make it interoperable with the online service.
Amazon offers online rentals for both kindle and mobiles.

Amazon has the largest digital content outside of Google which is in their mobi or derivative format and serviced direct to devices not through the mothership PC. They don’t have a DRM issue as they own the Kindle / mobi offline DRM and online can be secured a lot easier. They also have reflow with their format so moving onto a mobile platform is easy.

We know what we would do if we were Amazon!

Google's Digital Book Jigsaw

First we had Amazon’s Search Inside, then the explosion of widgets in every shape, colour and format. Now we have the mobile phone application. Being able to search discover and qualify, or ‘browse before you buy’ is clearly here. So where is it going and who are the potential winners and the also ran’s? As with any venture, who pays and what is the return on the investment? Finally, are we now seeing the blurring of digital content and digital context (the metadata that helps you qualify and value content)?

Google has announced an Android search tool called the Barcode Scanner that recognises through the phone’s camera a book's barcode. According to Jeff Breidenbach, Engineer, Google Book Search, "it will automatically zoom, focus and scan the ISBN - without you even needing to click the shutter...You'll then have the option to search the full text of the book on Google Book Search right away"

There are limitations on the bar codes being post the mid 90s and of course the books being in Google Book Search. But then what? Some would argue that you already have the book in your hand so why do you need Book Search? Others may point out that the next question is that of price and availability and although you may have it in your hand would you transfer the sale to someone else if it where cheaper and delivered to your home? Some say that it provides additional digital services to explore external links, reviews, and perform keyword searches.

The arguments are immaterial, what is important is that the technology to link a mobile camera application, a bar code and Google Book Search is now a given. Why Google developed it and what they intend to do with it is subjective, the fact is they have.

Will there now be an iPhone, Blackberry or Symbian follower and will they link to Google or some other repository? It’s almost certain. Is it an application for librarys, retailers or consumers, remains unclear. The questions to ask are what can be achieved through this mobile linkage, where is the value and its potential within the Google world.

Publishers Weekly report that Borders has also stepped into the Google contexural world and have enabled Google Preview on their site. Borders joins Books-A-Million and the Blackwell Bookshop in using the service. The enhanced version of the Preview software enables the retailer to offer Google Preview to books they stock and that are within Google whilst effectively locking them into the retailer’s site. The interesting aside is that the majority of retailers promote non stocked inventory, so this feature could potentially obviate the publisher’s own widgets and also those supplied by others such as wholesalers.

If we step back and look at the various pieces of the Google Book World jigsaw we see many that could easy fit together and offer not just a solution that covers digital content but digital context and digital rights. Interesting times!

Smartphones Look a Smartbet

The New York Times today reported that in the first 10 days after the new iPhone after launched owners downloaded more than 25 million applications. This new feature has certainly caught the imagination of both consumers and application providers.

This opening up of the airways is not just about iPhones. Carriers are increasingly opening up their services to can create a mobile phone compatible with their networks. Nokia has agreed to share the Symbian operating software with other phone makers and a similar move has been announced by the LiMo Foundation.

Smartphones are fast becoming ubiquitous and the computer in the hand and analysts are already enthusing over the potential for cellphone applications and their drive to get consumers onto higher-priced wireless data plans. So we are seeing the next device step change. First there was the dumb screen, then the desktop PC, then the laptop, then the PDA now the smartphone! Simple shrinking of the computer into the hand and doing this in parallel to the access going from hard wire to wireless.

Just like in the days before there has to be a fall out and some losers. Remember the OS2 versus Windows days? Remember the desktop, browser, and search application wars? We have yet to see the entrance of Google and its Open Handset Alliance and operating system and it’s already mighty crowded.
You have carrier, device, operating system and application and establishing true interoperability may be tricky to start. But we also have to put this against a life expectancy of 12 to 18 months of a smartphone and see that the consumer market is not as constrained and can quickly shift.

We envisage a situation where many of the applications we have today will run on the smartphone and there will be new ones specifically written for the platform. Given this is clearly where the action is what does this mean re publishing and content? Well it is rather an easy and obvious step to conclude that this will be a significant medium for publishers.

Will we read books on smart phones? Probably fragments or short works but today’s 250page tomes – we don’t think so. But the opportunity to develop different content, sell fragments, use smart phones to promote titles and market titles is pretty obvious. The one other obvious thing is that people will not want the umbilical cord to the laptop in order to download stuff so some should question some of ebook models currently being deployed and think consumer and smartread.

Mobile eBook Reader?

When Apple opens its store on Friday and Steve Jobs launches the new iPhone, the impact is likely to be as significant at last time, but the difference this time, is that its not so much the phone, but what you can do with it.

The new 3G phone has been effectively unlocked to enable more than 500 developers to create new applications and download others. The technology market has harnessed applications to drive demand before. Remember the IBM PC powered by Microsoft Window and more applications than the Mac. Remember the IBM and HP and DEC mid range periods of dominance all driven by software applications.

The availability of rich software could help tip the market further towards iPhone. However the gulf they have to breach is not small with Palming claim to have some 30,000 active software developers and Microsoft more than 18,000 applications available for its Windows Mobile operating system. 25% of the initial Apple applications will be free and 33% will be games. Of the commercial applications some 90% will be sold for $9.99. Apple would provide distribution and marketing.

Many have said that if Apple were to create an ebook reader then the market would take off. Others have agreed that the content and it packaging would need to change also to fit the mobile demands. What is clear is that the mobile applications market is hoting and opening up and it may not be Apple who now has to create that magic connection. Interestingly it is not rocket science to understand that the reason that Adobe back the epub standard so heavily and developed the only DRM to support it today was to have re-flow text that can be rendered on the mobile platform.

Perhaps things a closer than we all imagine.