OK so in 9 months customers of Apple have downloaded 1 Billion Applications for the iPhone AND iPod Touch.
I look upon this not as a demonstration of the market for mobile data services but rather the demand for personalisation. As before with people buying ringtones and wallpaper owners of mass market consumer electronics wish to make them unique.
I am not an iPhone user but I am someone with a Touch. I have 20 applications that I use on my iPod and have removed 6 that didn't work. The average for each of my applications is 4 updates since I have installed them. Does Apple count these as 26 Apps or 90 something?
I understand that Game Theory is deployed by the Vendor of an App to keep it in the charts thus I expect that we are looking at Double Counting.
As a Touch user I can only connect via WiFi but as someone who works in an environment that such services is ubiquitous connectivity other than when in Transit is good. How many iPhone users are also doing so over WiFi rather than 2G/3G mobile? Thus the next time that someone tells me that Mobile Data is mainstream can they at first demonstrate that what they are doing is possible on a handset that is not Smart?
The next few months will be interesting in that the economic downturn means that the old subsidy model is over and so will smartphone numbers grow if the consumer has to pay up front for the handset? Without a Smartphone what of the market for Apps?
When I can get Opera on my Touch I will consider that Apple is Open and Mobile Data is more than niche.
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