The General Theory of RIAtivity

So, let’s step back a moment and examine all that’s happened in the mobile world in 2007.

In January at MacWorld Steve Jobs announced that in six months time the iPhone would go on sale, delivering applications with a desktop-class feel. In June, as promised, the iPhone was released and it had sold over 1.1 million units by November. No doubt a revolutionary device (I speak from my own experience using it since day one), but as a developer I admit it has serious shortcomings. The “desktop-class” apps Steve Jobs were there if Apple provided them. Developers eager to deploy apps to the iPhone would have to be content with “iPhonified” web sites and applications that only worked through the iPhone Safari browser.

Then a clever bunch jailbroke the iPhone and provided a means to load native applications. This opened a door through which many developers eagerly ran, developing the usual games, proxy tools to services such as Flickr, and some obvious apps, such as voice recorded which seemed as obvious an app for the iPhone as MacPaint was to the original Macintosh. However, no sooner had a world of application development been opened than Apple shut it down with the release of the now infamous iPhone firmware 1.1.1 update — a heavy-handed, ham-fisted, and hasty approach to the problem of iPhone unlocking which made developers with legitimate intentions casualties of war.

Then came the outcry from developers who wanted to make something more of the iPhone than a $400-$600 phone/alarm clock/MP3 player. It took a few weeks, but Apple announced they’d release an SDK for the iPhone in February 2008. All the while, Apple missed (or perhaps ignored) the demand for an SDK — the had to have known since the earliest internal discussions that there would be a demand for an iPhone SDK. On second thought I think Apple did ignore developers, not something inconsistent with Apple’s past. Call it Jobs’ Ego or just Apple Paranoia (leftover from the days when they were scrapping it up with Microsoft in the 1980’s), but Apple has repeated the same mistake they made in the original OS wars — they’ve failed to respect the developercommunity as the real vehicle to their success. Steve Jobs and Woz have admitted as much in interviews — Steve Jobs even reflected in a recent video interview where he appeared with Bill Gates that a talent of Microsoft’s that he always admired was their ability to play well with others, meaning developers. Steve excused Apple’s failure at doing so with the fact that he and Woz were completely self-reliant when they built and marketed the original line of Apple computers. Fine, you make a mistake like that once (which cost them 90%+ of the personal computing market), but to make it TWICE?

And that’s exactly what Apple has done with the release of the iPhone with no SDK to date. The hardware, OS, and out-of-the-box apps only get it so far — the killer app(s) that would solidify the iPhone’s position as the #1 phone for years to come lies in the minds of developers, waiting to be unleashed. But alas, Apple has again failed to believe in developers.

Now we have the introduction of Google’s Android Mobile OS. Yesterday they released the Android SDK, complete with an emulator, videos, sample apps, prolific documentation, ways to collaborate with other developers, and $10 million in prizes to incent developers to let loose their great ideas on the Android platform. In contrast, Apple now has a very high bar to meet when they release the iPhone SDK in February 2008. Apple could have set the pace and put thousands of developers to work on making the iPhone an even more appealing device by releasing an SDK and embracing developers. I have to believe that Apple has now relegated themselves to the #3 or worse position for the foreseeable future in the mobile phone market. iPhone sales are great now, but once the first Android phones start shipping and Microsoft redoubles it’s Windows Mobile efforts, Apple will find themselves in the familiar position of owning less than 5% of consumer (non-business) mobile phone market. You might say, “So what, Apple had 0% phone market share before the iPhone.” True, but the tragedy (especially to shareholders) is that by embracing developers Apple could have probably realized double-digit market share in the 3-5 year range worldwide.

Apple is hard to love when they make enormous mistakes like this . After working with the Android SDK last night and seeing the vast resources Google has offered up to developers I just can’t find a compelling reason to develop native iPhone apps. The mobile wars going forward won’t be with the handset manufacturers (they’re being demoted to utlility status for the most part), it will be Google Android vs. Windows Mobile for the massive dollars that will be spent in the consumer mobile market and it’s unfortunate to think Apple may have missed their seat near the head of the table.