“Apple’s iPhone scored another round of praise and publicity after unveiling a program that will let other companies create applications for the popular device,” Anthony Bruno reports for Billboard. “But the excitement didn’t make its way to the mobile music market. Although those hoping to add mobile games, corporate e-mail accounts and other content to their iPhone are thrilled, music services see little opportunity to use the groundbreaking device as a means of advancing the enjoyment or acquisition of music from mobile phones.”
“The background: Apple released a beta software development kit (SDK) that gives programmers various tools to develop applications that not only run on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but also take advantage of several key capabilities — such as the touch-screen and motion sensor,” Bruno reports. “‘It’s an open question at this point how amenable Apple will be to offering products or applications that could conceivably interfere with its own iTunes revenue stream,’ NPD Group’s Ross Rubin says.”
“An iPhone version of Rhapsody or Napster is almost certainly out of the question, as both require software and digital rights management not compatible with Apple products. In more of a gray area are online streaming services like Last.fm, Pandora and imeem. None has downloading capabilities outside of linking to such third-party services as iTunes, and as such Apple may see them as services that drive sales rather than cannibalize them,” Bruno reports.
“‘The real interesting test case will be Amazon,’ Rubin says. ‘Here’s a music vendor selling songs that are clearly compatible with the iPhone. Unlike with Rhapsody or Napster, there’s no DRM you need to make work,'” Bruno reports. “The same goes for eMusic. But both are considered iTunes challengers, and Apple could easily decline to make their applications available in the AppStore.”
“Also discouraging is that, at least in the beta version of the SDK, developers won’t have access to any iTunes functionality. This severely restricts the ability for such iTunes plug-in applications as iLike, Last.fm, Qloud or OnTour to create iPhone-compatible widgets that might expand basic iTunes functions,” Bruno reports. “But they can still write Web applications that users can access through iPhone’s Safari browser, which does not require Apple’s SDK or approval.”
More in the full article here.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
> No issue, Steve knows what’s best for us.
First the iPhone, next… the [MW] others?
Photoshop, Illustrator and Adobe products in general are a great example of a model whereby a developer can retain control of their core application yet enable an ecosystem to grow around it.
This is one approach extending iTunes without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs that Apple show support, in my opinion. Third parties could build great slideshow tools, recommendation engines, editing or sample tools, etc., all of which are areas that are peripheral to iTunes, and which Apple can always co-opt if they really want to.
These type of threads are a great test of the control v. (developer) community dynamics that will continue to play out as Apple tries to build a mainstream platform; namely, secure developer ecosystem love while maintaining the high performance bar that they have established with the iPhone/iPod touch family of devices.
In that respect, it is somewhat of a three dimensional chess game unfolding, something I blogged about in, ‘The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK.’
Check it out if interested:
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/03/the-scorpion-th.html
Cheers,
Mark
Interestingly enough, at the end of the article, the author writes, “Even though the iPhone owns less than 1 percent of the overall phone market, it disproportionately owns the majority of the multimedia activity taking place on mobile phones. Apple claims 71 percent of all mobile Internet browsing activity with the iPhone simply because it’s easier to surf the Web on it than on other devices.”
Cause it “just works” so easliy, it rules.!!! Nothing magic, just smart.
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Duh! Did people really think that Apple was going to allow dev’s to turn the iPhone into mobile Napsters?
Just my $0.02
If this had been Microsoft, you people would be asking for their head on a platter.
You people are so full of shit.
“I think Apple should be congratulated for having the BALLS to open this can of worms in the first place. Most other companies (like, umm, dunno… Microshit) say to their customers “here is the product. If you don’t like it, well, TOUGH.””
The balls to cut off competition?