3GSM - What All Those New Smartphones Mean, And It�s A Lot at MobHappy

In my earlier post, I pointed out how smartphones are moving to the mass market. This has significant ramifications for the whole industry, not the least of which mobile application sales.

The application download and sales environment is something of a holdover from the days of the PDA: people, typically professional or prosumer users or early adopters, find a relatively task-specific application, buy it, and install it on their device. It’s little wonder that the download market is dominated by work-oriented and productivity apps, while the only significant consumer downloads (outside content like ringtones and wallpapers) have been games. The mass market’s not shown an overwhelming interest in downloading applications, and it’s not likely that their views will change all that significantly just because they get smartphones. But — and this is a big but — they love services. Whether it’s SMS sports scores, checking public transport schedules or my old standby, looking up movie showtimes, people like services. The application is almost irrelevant, except as a means to an end, whether it’s a Web browser, messaging client or something more specific. It’s the same type of thing on the wired Net: standalone application use pales in comparison to that of services.

This fits how people use mobile devices, if you think about it. Even on their most basic level, mobile phones are valuable not as an application, but because they provide access to services like voice calls and messaging. Strip that service out, and the application is worthless. You can even easily find examples in the enterprise or professional market — the value of Blackberry and other push e-mail systems is in the service, not in the application.

The upshot of this is that the application development and download market is in for some big changes — but they’re definitely positive. Standalone application development will find success, but it will be in niche markets. Those that find mass-market success will be those that provide an interface to a service (look at stuff that I’ve written about before like ShoZu most recently as an example). Another way to look at this is that the mobile phone does provide a computing platform on which standalone apps can be run, but at their heart, mobile devices are communications devices, and the connectivity they have should be used to its full potential. Again, think of a simple voice call: what good is a basic phone when it can’t access the network and, in turn, voice services?

So, while the standalone application market will find some success, the service market will be huge. So think in terms of services — what’s the service users are being provided, and then what’s the application needed to deliver it. This calls for plenty of support that existing applications providers can adapt to provide: distribution, and especially billing. There need to be frameworks in which to distribute the applications that provide access to services, systems for content delivery and billing mechanisms. And all of these need to be designed and delivered with the same attention to the user experience as the services themselves, integrating into existing patterns of use and payment mechanisms.

The switch to thinking in terms of services rather than applications might be daunting for some developers and content providers, but there is a payoff: recurring subscriptions. Provide someone an application, and they’ll pay you once. Provide someone a service, and they’ll keep on paying. This isn’t a license to rip off users, like some ringtone and wallpaper providers have chosen to do by duping people into shady subscription plans, but it calls for some new thinking. A good example would be the Sudoku application that the Future Platforms crew made for Puzzler Media. The application is free, but users are charged 25p every time they ask for a new puzzle. On the one hand, this lets people who download the app, then don’t like it or don’t use it not feel ripped off. On the other, it generates a recurring revenue stream from repeat users. Another possible benefit is that platforms exist that developers can use to access services that don’t require as much time to energy to develop as standalone applications.

We’re on the precipice of a big paradigm shift that calls for a pretty radical rethink. Insert your own dramatic ending here, but times, they are a-changing