Apps Are the New Apps

Mark Damon Hughes:

This is why Windows Phone 7 is screwed. It needs apps. And to get apps, it has to compete for developer time and money with platforms that make money, either directly or by advertising. It has nothing to do with the carrier system. It has nothing to do with marketing. You have to convince developers to: Install Windows (which they won’t do), learn the Windows dev tools (which they won’t do), and then release on the Windows store, where it won’t make any money, because there’s no customers.

Put another way, the good news for Windows Phone 7 is that a platform doesn’t need the most apps merely to compete. The bad news is that a platform does need enough good apps and enough good developers — and ideally, some excellent titles exclusive to the platform — and Windows Phone doesn’t seem to have any of those things.

I also suspect, like Hughes, that it’s a big problem for Microsoft that developers need to use Windows to develop for Windows Phone. Sure, a majority of all “programmers” in the world may well still be using Windows, but because of iOS, an overwhelming majority of the best mobile app programmers in the world are on Mac OS X.

★ Monday, 16 January 2012