Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext (
The democratic appstores and Customers voting with their downloads. The wider implications of Skype on Nokia Ovi/Symbian devices ..
Update:
Another way to say this is: ‘Apps are the spearhead to Operator deals’. i.e. while Operators have blocked many applications on their portals .. the apps are more democratic and reflective of the true customer intentions. Their success motivates the Operators/handset vendors to align better with their customers’s wishes by integrating successful apps deeply into the network / device
Last week, Skype announced their launch on Symbian/Nokia devices through Ovi. This means, 200 million Nokia mobile phones are capable of making Skype-to-Skype calls anywhere in the world over WiFi and 3G
This is good news ofcourse .. But there are wider implications.
With both Nokia and iPhone allowing customers to access Skype over their respective application stores, this could be a part of a wider trend. Skype was hugely successful on the iPhone with one million downloads in the first two days.
Thus, there was a clear customer demand. This was followed by Skype on Verizon (deeper integration for the Operator). And now by Skype on Nokia.
Thus, we are seeing a virtuous cycle where appstores demonstrate a demand for services
Appstores, by their nature, are Long Tail and hence ‘democratic’. In other words, you would never have seen Operators rushing to deploy Skype on their portals!
So, now we create a virtuous circle.
Apps are deployed on appstores
Customers vote with their downloads
This motivates Operators like Verizon and 3 to integrate apps deeply into their network
This is a good trend. It is good for Openness, for customers, for devices(differentiation) and also networks(they give services which their customers have demonstrated demand for)
Image: http://sanlorenzolibrary.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/scales-of-justice.gif
