the onda

The FT has one of these mostly wrong pieces today on the Android Market versus the iPhone AppStore that makes you glad old media is dying. Usually the province of the mail-it-in NYT writers, the article makes a few spurious arguments, including that it is really easy to port an iPhone app to the Android platform (it is absolutely not), and that what users really want is quality apps instead of overwhelming amounts of quantity.

What users really want is mobile computing, full stop. This means a first-rate web browser, an email client that works well, a maps application that is usable walking and driving, the best possible camera software for cleaning up the deficiencies of a small form factor, and maybe, just maybe, a media player that can fill some white spaces. The AppStore mania, partly fueled by Apple fanboy fervor, and partly fueled by Apple's fantastic marketing machine, keeps making it such that this gets lost in the mix.

What developers want is the ability to deliver their increasingly cloud-based applications into as broad of a mobile device footprint as possible, along with— in a few narrow verticals— the ability to monetize at point of install through a micropayment system that works. Apple is off to a great start on the last point, but let's face it, the carrier/consumer billing relationship is much stronger (ringtones have proven that), and also a more natural place for micropayments to happen.

We are so tied up in AppStore mania (one of the great themes of 2009) that we've lost the real story: the twin forces of the move of computing happening in the cloud with really compelling mobile browsers that should, over the medium term, subsume all of the more important native platform capabilities. That is the real story I wish these big guys were writing about.