Palm is in a great position right now, they’ve created a revolutionary mobile device and have a lot of loyal fans ready to spread the word. Although the Pre probably isn’t going to rid the world of the iPhone, Palm can learn and benefit greatly from Apples mistakes, especially when it comes to the App store, which has been a huge headache for many developers.
App Store Frustration
The App store is what brings many consumers to the iPhone. Apple recognizes this and has created multimillion dollar marketing campaigns that proclaim “There’s an App for Just About Everything”. After spending many Friday nights with friends at a bar trying to brainstorm new app ideas, I’ve found that there really is an app for just about everything. However it’s clear that Apple built the current App store for thousands of apps, not tens or even hundreds of thousands of apps.
If you plan to get rich from the iPhone app your developing right now you might as well head to Atlantic City or Vegas and spend the remainder of your budget playing the slots there. The fundamental way the app store was designed is preventing most new apps from ever seeing the light of day or surpassing just a trickle of downloads. This has obviously lead to a lot of frustrated developers who have great apps, and no money.
Palm needs their “App Catalog” to be a success in order for the Pre and WebOS to ever go mainstream. Although the Pre is technically on Par with the iPhone, when it comes to apps the Pre could be years behind. This is why Palm needs to bring developers to their platform fast, and whats a better way to do that then giving them an opportunity to make more money than they can with the iPhone?
To Attract More Developers Palm Needs To
- Streamline the developer approval process.
- Create an app store that gives all apps a fighting chance.
- Give developers a larger percentage of revenue than Apple.
- Set CLEAR guidelines and rules so that developers know from the start if their app will be approved or not.
If Palm can convince developers to port their existing projects over to webOS, which shouldn’t be hard (considering how easy Palm claims webOS is to develop for) - they could have thousands of apps for the Pre available almost overnight. The faster the Pre can catch up to the iPhone when it comes to apps, the faster it will be accepted into the mainstream and by looking at financials of both Palm and Sprint, they need this to hit the mainstream - fast.
As I started above, Palm really needs to also streamline the developer approval process. To currently become an iPhone developer you need to fill out a form, pay a yearly fee and then wait to be approved while Apple verifies the business information you provided. Sounds pretty straightforward right?
We’ll what they don’t mention is it can take weeks, even months to be approved. I have a friend who recently went through the approval process. He provided all the correct information and it took Apple over 4 weeks to glance over his information and approve him for the program. A bit ridiculous? I think so.
To accept all of the developers that will be jumping ship, Palm needs to have an approval process that is much more streamlined than the 4+ week process over at Apple. I think developers have had it up to here with the crapshoot of iPhone app approval process as well. It seems like at least once or twice a week you read about an app that was mysteriously rejected by Apple, just because. If Palm can promise that if you stick to the guidelines, your app will be approved, they will gain a lot of respect from the app development community.
How else do you think Palm can benefit from App Store mistakes Apple has made?
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Im not sure I understand the picture… Why would you circle the gay community app and not the others, because your search for twitter failed? cause I’m pretty sure neither reMovem nor VR Voice messenger have anything to do with twitter. Is that supposed to be funny?
The picture is actually just from the site Failblog.com. When I was finishing the post I remembered seeing it awhile back and thought it kinda demonstrated how broken even the search for the Apple app store really was. I assume they circled the gay community and not the others because right away you can tell obviously that has nothing to do with Twitter, where as the others aren’t as well known. I’m not sure if your suggesting that its offensive or not, but that’s not how it came across to me.
Its better to be safe than sorry so I went out on a hunt for a better picture and I think I found one.
I’ve had four palms over the years. As I recall, I could go online and search for palm software downloads, and find tons of apps. It was pretty much an open system, and apps were avaiable for download, just like apps for your computer are. Many were free, others had free demo versions, and others you had to pay for right from the beginning. I could comfortably say “there’s an app for just about everything” back then. Why isn’t palm doing the WebOS the same way? Instead of trying to make a buck off every app download, just make your money by selling more phones. The availability of apps in an open environment would be a huge selling point for the phone, I would think. Palmgear.com claims they have 29,000+ software titles available. Since there is an app for the pre that allows you to run palm OS apps, it seems to me they already have a large selection of apps for it.
If Palm has no yearly developer fee and can make their money strictly on hardware and a percentage of app royalties, I think developers will flock to it. Any chance to save money.