iPhone Appstore

The appstore is easily the most interesting part of the iPhone, much more than 3G.

I agree whole-heartedly. I believe the AppStore is a great thing from a commercial point of view, both for Apple (obviously), but also for the developers who all have (almost) the same chance to have their app noticed and make a ton of money from it. I understand concerns with regards to the openness of the whole thing – but hey, this is a free market and it's not as if anybody forces you to buy into this particular walled garden.

Comments

On July 21, 2008 12:32 AM, Aristotle Pagaltzis

said:

Are you serious, a free market? In the mobile telephony space? Where?

On July 21, 2008 7:49 AM, Stefan Tilkov

said:

Sure, why not? You might claim (with some reason) that many things suck, but there’s definitely a lot of competition, and the barrier to entering it doesn’t seem too hight (except for the core net operation due to frequency licensing, but that’s no longer the interesting part of the market anyway).

On July 26, 2008 11:38 PM, Aristotle Pagaltzis

said:

This is kind of incendiary, and I should probably not say it, but mobile telephony seem to me like a free market about as much as the US are a democracy… ;-)

Sure, it follows the form, and in quite a few ways it is, but it is dominated by big incumbents with very similar strategies, leading to little or no choice in many critical aspects. So it is a far cry from what a healthy situation would look like.