Last week the QlikView app for the iPhone was released. I mentioned in my post that I don’t have an iPhone, but God knows how much I want one.
More Than Just Phones
Om Malik from Gigaom just wrote a very good article titled How Apple Put Everyone In an App State of Mind. The article explains how the iPhone App store has become the primary choice for developers.
The most important part of the article is in my opinion on this paragraph:
From a consumer perspective, what really matters to me is the long-tail of apps that are easy to find, download and install. I may have given up on AT&T’s iPhone, but I have not given up on the iPhone platform. Why? Because of the applications.
A few years ago I would have happily bought a Samsung phone or a Nokia or even an unknown brand for one simple reason: they were just phones and all you could really do with those devices was calling someone else.
Today the game is different. I am not buying a mobile phone anymore, I am buying a mobile computer. The difference is huge.
I never bought an Apple computer, I have always been a PC user and quite happy about it for the same reason mentioned by Om about the iPhone: the long tail of apps. It doesn’t matter what I am looking for, I am sure I will find an program working with Windows.
I am only tempted to move to Apple when I use my wife’s PC that runs on Vista (probably the worst piece of software ever released) and I expect the same kind of self-lock-in will happen the day I will own an iPhone.
The release of the QlikView App is a confirmation of what Om wrote and it keeps reinforcing the perception among consumers that Apple has built the best platform for mobile computers.
Nokia or any other vendor can certainly come up with a device that is better than the iPhone in terms of functionalities, but it will be a hell of job to get a good apps ecosystem in motion.
Conclusion
Choosing a platform has its pros and cons, but just as I am sticking to Windows for the computers (well, as long as I don’t have to use Vista), I will stick to the iPhone for the mobile computers segment.
There’s no perfect solution, but knowing that I can find pretty much any app I need and that the iPhone will get priority among developers over other platforms is a at the moment a BIG plus in my opinion.
Sure, things can change in the future and I’ll keep my eyes open, but for the moment there’s no much discussion: I want an iPhone and you should want one too.
PS: yes I took the pictures from Om’s article, way too lazy to search elsewhere…
