"Adobe is set to follow rival Apple"

Adobe is a software company, Apple is a hardware company.

" "Adobe is set to follow rival Apple"

Adobe is a software company, Apple is a hardware company." ... By Tom Chiverton Posted Friday 14th November 2008 23:25 GMT

Tom,

Both are firmware companies.

<i>Apple's store, despite popularity with consumers, is still criticized by some programmers for being over-controlled and mean with the revenue split so there is still an opportunity for operators to outshine it.</i>

I had to double-check that this article wasn't being written by Rob Enderle. In which universe are (i) the telcos/handset manufacturers not going to put the kibosh on apps they don't like (VOIP springs to mind) and (ii) Apple's 30:70 split not the best currently on offer.

My assigned grade for the author of this junk is "must try harder".

"... 30 million subscribers, three times the number of iPhones expected... by end of this year"

I'm sorry - the only people expecting 10 million iPhones by end '08 are those who had their eyes closed during the last quarterly earnings release. There are already more than 10M about.

On an unrelated note, I can't see anyone getting a developer community as excited as Apple. Make your stores and dev worlds telcos, it'll generate about as much interest and useful software as MIDP2.0

WE DON'T NEED A NEW MOBILE APP PLATFORM - we just need to make the ones we've got more straightforward for people to use.

Despite Adobe saying that no mobile app platform is over 50%, some stats rate Java penetration on western GSM networks at over 80%, the only major barrier against Java is that end users have no consistency of install and application launch between handsets.

Adobe adding a new flash-lite based environment or app store does not help solve the developers dilema, it just makes it worse. (in fact, I've not heard of a phone that supports Flash Lite without already supporting Java)

The widely praised iPhone TV adverts that show app discovery, purchase and install have helped users become comfortable with the process - building a similar advert for standard phones is impossible as they differ too much.

Users get confused or scared off by too many warning messages and prompts, and either go to the microsoft vista encouraged approach of clicking "YES" to everything, or just running away at the first message that says "this software comes from an untrusted source" when the manufacturers and operators have made it pretty near impossible to reliably sign applications to be from a trusted source (by cunningly tinkering with the root certificates on the phones).

If Apple and Microsoft would support Java, and all handset manufacturers would standardise the security and install messages for app install, users may finally be able to make use of the largest application platform in the world.

We're not looking for a new app store technology here - just a more consistant install experience!

As was discussed at the MDA's workshop, we probably won't get this through comittee, only through the bullying of a dominant manufacturer, or operator.

For almost any other operator, the launch of an app store would be seen as a logical move and barely raise an eyebrow. But the fact that this is O2, and when taking into account the looming presence of iPhone and Apple’s App Store, it becomes much more interesting. It seems clear that, with the Litmus project, O2 is looking to create a kind of level playing field for its devices, and perhaps it has even been directly influenced by the success of iPhone’s developer community.

Whatever the reason, the introduction of any new initiative that encourages the growth of a developer community should be welcomed with open arms. One grumble though would be that so far, although Apple has offered plenty in the way of quirky consumer apps, it hasn’t done nearly enough to establish its credentials in the corporate space. O2 would be wise to remedy this failing and exploit the massive potential market out there for serious business app.