Interesting reading! Apple & Company has 4 of the top 5 killer Apps
released in the last 30 years, so it will be exciting to see what the
iPhone will bring to the comatose Cell Industry.
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The great scramble among software developers to write the first iPhone
killer app is coming to a head.
The race began in earnest in March when Steve Jobs unfolded Apple¹s
³iPhone software roadmap,² a two-part package comprised of a tool kit to
help developers write programs for the iPhone and a venue in which to
sell them ‹ a variation on Apple¹s iTunes music store model called the
App Store.
Although the iPhone 3G is set to go on sale in eight days ‹ at 8 a.m.
Friday July 11 ‹ Apple has still not announced when the software store
will open. But on Wednesday it delivered a pretty broad hint: a midnight
July 7 deadline for developers to submit their finished apps for the
store¹s grand opening.
³Have your application be among the first available when the App
Store goes live,² the message read. ³We will continue to accept
applications after this time, however your application may not be
available until after the launch of the App Store.²
The message was not lost on developers. From Oracle to VisiCalc, the
winning application on any software platform tends to be the one that
gets there first ‹ although as VisiCalc proved when it was overtaken
first by Lotus 1-2-3 and then by Microsoft Excel, any app can be
displaced when a new platform comes along.
According to Apple (AAPL), 25,000 people applied to be part of its
iPhone developers program, of which 4,000 were admitted. These include
some of the biggest names in software publi****ng ‹ Sega and Electronic
Arts (ERTS), for example ‹ and representatives from approximately 175
Fortune 500 companies, as well as hundreds of one-man shops. But even
the biggest boys can use the free publicity that will attend prominent
positioning on the App Store shelves on opening day.
With so many apps to choose among, picking winners will not be easy.
Apple has the best perspective; it showcased 16 apps at the March SDK
event and the June Worldwide Developers Conference (see the keynote
here), and by next week it will have seen and signed off on hundreds
more.
Meanwhile, pitches from publishers inviting software reviews have
started to pour in over the transom. Businessweek last Friday posted a
slide show featuring a dozen programs under development (see here).
Other journalists have used their blogs to troll for promising apps. The
coyest was posted by The New York Times¹ David Pogue, author of ³iPhone
- The Missing Manual,² who may or may not already have an iPhone 3G in
hand for review (if he did, he couldn¹t say). On Tuesday, he bemoaned
the fact that even ³Big Chief Newspaper Reviewers² didn¹t know what apps
were coming down the pike and invited developers to give him sneak peaks
(see here). He may have regretted opening the floodgates. By 1:35 that
afternoon, his post had been updated and the invitation withdrawn.
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/07/03/all-eyes-on-the-iphone-ap
p-store/
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