“And as all these massses of people around the globe started getting on the Internet and realizing just how massive a marketplace it was becoming and then started to see that we’d never consume telephone services, video (TV, movies, and user-gen), fax, and most any other communication or connective technology the same again, the bubbles started brewing,” Willard writes.
“So get ready for the coming app-bubble,” Willard writes. “I mean, come on, you know that even as the early adopters have been using apps and smartphones for the last few years, it’s just now starting to become a mainstream phenonomon. This year some 250 million people will buy a smartphone, up from 150 million last year and on its way to more than a billion people in less than a decade from now. When was the last time you heard growth statistis for a marketplace that blew your mind like that? Yup, probably back when you first started researching ways to invest in the Internet… Whatever you do, get into apps, right now. The app bubble cometh.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “iWill” for the heads up.]
All bubbles burst…
Apple is sitting in the catbird seat right now.
#1 this is the same a-hole that last week wrote an article with the hit-whoring headline “New big brother patent from Apple would kill jailbroken iPhones and invade your privacy”
#2 this guy looks like a smug douchebag. I dont take advice from smug d-bags.
What is this asswipe talking about
The only app bubble that exists right now benefits one company and it comes from the hard work Apple put into *both* its SDK and app store models. Without one, the other doesn’t work. Until the developer environments – and by “environment” I mean “way to make apps” and “way to sell apps” comes up to Apple’s standard, this will be a one-party bubble.
apples and oranges my friend…
Any day now, this Internet thing is gonna go bust too, when every single person on the planet has a blog and lay as much b.s. as one wants while all natural resources are devoted to preserve such precious *content*.
I tend to avoid MarketWatch articles…
Way too much shoddy journalism going on over there… Especially from Paul Farrell, (who is a classic hit-whore artist in the proud Dvorak tradition) but Cody Willard isn’t much better.
Idiot,
People buy software because they need it to fill a specific role, this market has been around for decades, applications are not going away nor will they become less popular. That`s like saying you better hurry up and eat, there`s a food bubble coming.
Food bubble aka Oprah?
@BMW – “The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber, is one of my all-time favorite short stories. Always glad to see that term used.
“Applications” already had its “bubble,” before the Internet became commonplace. It gave MS-DOS and Windows a big advantage, because more of those “apps” ran under the Microsoft’s OS than any other, including Mac OS. And once users had a collection of applications for a certain platform, they were not going to switch to a different platform and start over.
Once the Internet took over as the primary reason most people owned personal computers, the web browser took over as the primary “app” because you could basically do 90% of what you wanted to do within a browser (except for some areas such as gaming and media content creation). Apps became less important.
Now, with smart phones (and to a lesser extent tablets), the screen is small and system resources are more limited, so there is a usability advantage for specially designed apps that are optimized to do something specific. On a smart phone, people use a special app for something they would have done (on a computer) using a standard web browser with Google Search or some other web site.
This time, Apple has the huge advantage over everyone else. Its iOS platform has the most apps by far. Its customers have accumulated large collections of apps. No matter what the competition comes up with to entice users, Apple has the ongoing “app advantage.” iPhone (as well as iPod touch and iPad) users are not going to be easily convinced to abandon their app collection and start over.
… something the wise and the lucky get out of shortly before it bursts, taking most (all?) current owners to the cellars with it. It is not a Good Thing. It is an accident that WILL happen. Eventually.
If an App bubble forms, it would be wise to play for it. For example … be one of those guys earning tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on $5 apps rather than shooting for millions on $100+ apps. The former will still have a market after the “pop”, the later will have to cut their price significantly, and may go broke.
So, does this guy think people are eventually just going to stop buying apps? WTF is he smoking?
“What is this asswipe talking about”
Typical wannabe trying to coin his own term.. bla bla bla…
Bubbles refer to MARKETS..
The price of Apps doesn’t change, its not like the prices are going up up up then pop, heck, they’re not even investments.
Anyway… Cody Willard,… thanks for chippin in there bud
One point he got right: it feels like the internet-revolution 15 years ago. Or the PC revolution 30 years ago.
This guy is seriously clueless, the app is nothing more than software for your phone. Nothing new there. The only new thing is that “smart” phones are going mainstream. So it should be smartphone bubble. But that would not get the press that app bubble does.
Please remember to clean up, app bubble.
“After all, it wasn’t until late 1998 that Sergei and Brin even started the company that would create the single largest fortune out of the Internet– Google….”
Owners names should be at least spelled correctly: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, not “Sergei and Brin” like in the article……
Bubble Bath!
mother forgot to change pampers for a month poor baby
The definition of a bubble is something that expands in such a rate that it can’t possibly sustain itself.
If don’t get what this guy is talking about. Apps are good. He thinks it’s over? Only because something expands does not mean it’s a bubble. I think USA has gotten bubble mania. People see bubbles everywhere…