A Wider Net

Yesterday Apple held a town hall press conference to announce the release of their software development kit (SDK) that provides third party developers the opportunity to create and publish their own applications for the iPhone and iTouch devices. This conference turned out to be another major game-changer in the mobile phone industry and there were lots of big surprises. Since many of these announcements will greatly affect the business community, especially sales and marketing professionals, I felt it was worth reviewing the highlights for our readers.

At the top of the conference Steve Jobs announced enterprise support for the iPhone, enabling synchronization between iPhones and Microsoft Exchange. In fact, they appear to have integrated with Exchange more directly and fluidly than any other smart phone platform. Email, contacts, tasks, calendar will be very easy to handle on your iPhone, and all of the data can be remotely wiped for security protection. This makes the iPhone, with all of it’s multimedia presentation capabilities and it’s chic design prestige arguably the most desirable and most productive mobile work tool that you can fit in your shirt pocket.

And for sales professionals it gets even better: They demonstrated a Salesforce.com SFA application for iPhone. It apparently also links to the phone’s GPS-like mapping capabilities.

What exactly is the SDK? The SDK is a set of tools that allows developers to make applications for the iPhone. It costs $99 and if the examples in the press conference were any indicator, then they have made developing on this platform crazy simple. They demonstrated examples of what could be done in 2 hours, 2 days, and 2 weeks. None of the examples were ready-to-market apps, but they showed two very important things: First, the platform is powerful - more powerful than developers anticipated. It seemed to have no trouble rendering 3D games and animations. Second, the development kit is robust, making it possible to make the iPhone do just about anything.

Making it easy to develop applications is only part of their strategy. They also made it easy to publish those applications, easy to make money with them, and they even made it possible to obtain funding for their development. A new feature called the App Store allows iPhone users to download applications through their phone directly over wireless or sideways through iTunes. They share revenue with developers 70/30 - 30% goes to Apple and there are no additional fees. Developers set their own prices including, if they want, free, and if they choose to distribute free software, Apple won’t charge them or the end user a dime. What was not clear is what the developer will have to go through to get their content certified and on the store for users to download. Many people will be critical of this distribution method because it is far less open than the Windows Mobile platform which allows you to download applications from any mobile website. This is a mixed blessing - while Apple can control the applications this way, keeping buggy and malicious code from their platform, end users really want more control over where and how they buy content and applications for computing platforms. Regardless, they have made developing for the platform even more appealing by announcing a $100 million developer fund that should stimulate the creation of a good amount of quality software for the platform.

It didn’t take long for other software announcements for the iPhone to make waves, such as this one from Epocrates that provides doctors ready access to drug information.

Apple is clearly betting that mobiles phones represent the next generation computing platform (a common belief) and they want to own it. Decades ago computers evolved from room-filling monstrosities into desktop personal computers and for around 25 years we have watched them infiltrate every desk and home in the industrialized world. Apple may have had a chance to own that massive market 25 years ago, but many believe they handed it to Microsoft. Now Apple has stepped in with an absolutely stunning solution to the smart phone space. If they are correct, and if mobile phones are, in fact, the next mass market computing platform, then we may see their technology trickle down to the average consumer, much the way PC’s started in business and education and gradually made their way into homes. Then we, as marketers, will have a consistent small screen to work with instead of the wildly fragmented and closed systems currently offered to consumers through carriers like Verizon Wireless.

When you look at these announcements and compare them to their competition, they have suddenly made most of the major smartphone players irrelevant including Microsoft who watched their Windows Mobile platform drop behind the iPhone in the US market. Fake Steve Jobs said it well when he basically ranted that this announcement has killed, or re-killed, the rest of the smartphone players. While I disagree that this has killed Nokia, the rest should consider new day jobs. Seriously - who wants Windows Mobile now?

Is it enough for me to put up with the questionable AT&T network and the lousy track record they have for customer service dating back to Cellular One? No… But when the new iPhone comes out in the June time frame with 3G network support (fast data) and more storage space (32GB), then I may be sold, price depending. I fear the price will be astronomical. For the record - I still think the iPhone needs a keyboard like almost every other smart phone in the world including the probably-too-late Sony Xperia. It also needs more memory, a memory expansion slot, voice dialing, and 3G support. Let’s see how many of these things Apple addresses in June. I can live without physical buttons if they add decent voice control - an area into which Microsoft is clearly investing heavily. Sigh… I guess I have to admit that I really really really want one of these now.

Credit: Top image is from Engadget’s live blog post from the conference.