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Dear Apple, Downloads does not equal Developers

Posted on April 24, 2008
Filed Under Mobile Computing |

Apple’s CFO has announced 200,000 developers for the iPhone are raring to go, and especially rariing to do enterprise applications. Really?

Sounds remarkably like the claims that Palm used to make with the numbers of SDK’s download for Palm OS, and the hundreds of thousands of developers they had… And that platform has, as of today 4484 applications on Pocket Gear. Which is a nice return on the numbers of SDK downloaded.

Yes, every platform and manufacturer plays this game, and most rational commentators realise this… I’m just bracing myself for the non-rational commentators that will take this figure with less than a pinch of salt. That upsets me.

What’s also upsetting me, is that yet again, the iPod Touch users are getting left out in the cold - the iPhone users get the application support for free, iPod Touch have yet another chargeable update.

Apple plans to deliver a free update to the software that runs the iPhone — called iPhone 2.0 — in late June. That update will introduce the App Store, a new feature that will enable iPhone users to purchase, download and install third-party application software for the device. Apple also plans to release a similar update to the iPod touch — delivered for a nominal fee — that will enable iPod touch users to access the App Store as well.

(I’ve spoken in more depth on this over at Mobile Messaging, where I ask if Apple want to kill or cure the iPod Touch as a platform).

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