Commerce: March 2008 Archives
Once Apple has set up iTunes as a software store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, there is no reason they shouldn't leverage that functionality and presence to become the dominant software reseller for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.
iTunes has got to be the most inappropriately named application on the planet. Sure, you can play music, but it also synchronizes your photos, sends contacts to your phone and iPod, synchronizes your calendar with different services, let you buy games for your iPod, and now; will let you buy applications for your iPhone and iPod Touch. it is this last feature which particularly interests me.
IPhone applications will only be available via the iTunes store, to which the only interface is the iTunes application. All applications have to be approved by Apple, and all applications are digitally signed. This means that when you install an application on your iPhone, you know that it hasn't been modified from time the application developer first gave it to Apple. That's a very nice feature from a security standpoint, and one that is also available to programs written for the Mac OS Leopard operating system.
When Apple started selling music, the record companies didn't take them seriously, and never really saw what was coming. As a result, they lost control of the market for their music, and Apple gained the ability to become the number two music reseller in the United States. The only reason that Apple wasn't able to do this to the movie industry as well, is that the movie industry had been forewarned, and limited Apple's access to their content.
When I look at everything that Apple has to do in order to become a software reseller for the iPhone; I wonder whether they're really going to restrict their software to just the iPhone. The hard work in selling software for the iPhone has nothing to do with the iPhone itself. Apple has to set up marketing, digital signing, software evaluation, developer tools, download servers, software upgrade mechanisms, alpha and beta test processes, policies for handling sales and variable pricing, and all the other features that are expected of an online software store. After having gone to all this trouble, why is Apple going to stop with just selling software for the iPhone? Why not use the same software store to sell software for the Mac? For that matter, Windows Vista, also has digital signing support. Given the vast numbers of computers, both Windows and Macintosh, that have iTunes on them, Apple automatically has a huge distribution mechanism for software, and a pre-installed application for marketing, advertising and downloading that software. On top of that, because of the digital signing, Apple can advertise the software is being safer to download than the software that is downloaded off of other download sites.
If I worked at Kagi, Digital River, or one of the other companies that currently handle software sales and distribution (but not marketing), for independent software developers, I would start looking in my rearview mirror. Because iTunes is coming up fast, and has pulled out to pass.
(As a side note, this article was written using MacSpeech Dictate after only five minutes of training. It has worked extremely well, and I'll be writing a review shortly.)
If you think legal circles don't have much love for "business method" patents, try bringing them up in software development circles. Far too many of these are things which anyone, sitting down to deal with a particular problem, would immediately come up with. We can hope that the Bilski case may change things, but I wouldn't anticipate anything earth shattering. As the article points out, the very concept of "business patent" is pretty vague; it's hard to ban something you can't define. Like porn, it's one of those "I know it when I see it" things.
However, if you'd like to help put an end to nuisance patents, there are a number of organizations you can support. Here are a few:
- End Software Patents: End Software Patents
- EFF: Patent Busting Project
- Peer to Patent, Community Patent Review
- Patent Troll Tracker
- Lawmakers gear up for patent system overhaul | Tech News on ZDNet
- Patent reform--or else | Tech News on ZDNet
- PUBPAT > How to Find Prior Art
- Prior art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Patent Business Methods (USPTO)
My Del.icio.us links on patents:
