Recently, I wrote about my take on the smartphone market. My conclusion was that the key factor to success is the availability of apps, noting that iPhone is way ahead of the game with Android following closely behind while Microsoft and BlackBerry are nowhere. But as soon as I published my blog post, Microsoft announced that they now have 100,000 apps in their app store. And I started doubting myself...
100,000 apps sounds like a pretty good number. I only use about 100 apps on my iPhone and so 100,000 is a lot to choose from. But there was this nagging feeling that the number of apps available is actually a pretty meaningless number. What I really care about is my apps. The apps that satisfy my needs. But which apps are those?
Well, I recently published a post about my favorite apps on the iPhone. I have distinguished between the coolest and the most useful apps. That’s a good list to start. In the article, I have mentioned a few solid alternatives and so let’s add them to the list too. I should also add a couple of service apps for services I use a lot like Marriott and Air Canada. They didn’t make the list but let’s see. And for a good measure, let’s add some of the event specific apps to the list. What could be more important right now than Wimbledon, Tour de France and the Olympics?
That results is a pretty good basket of meaningful, useful apps. There are 30 of them in total and I have all of them on my iPhone. No basket is perfect or entirely rational but a sample basket is useful. Just ask the Dow-Jones. So let’s take a look at how the other smartphones scored. I have checked the app stores for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Here are the results:
The results? As expected, Android scored relatively high and by far the best. With 23 out of 30 apps available on Android, Google is not on the same level as Apple but certainly in contention. Microsoft Windows scored 16 out of 30 apps which was disappointing. That said, most of the big providers such as Netflix, Audible, Shazam or Evernote have made it as far as supporting Windows by now which is encouraging. But if you are looking for any more specialized apps for your Windows Phone, forget it.
BlackBerry, as expected, is far behind and considering that they are in the process of switching operating systems to QNX, the apps shortage is not going to improve anytime soon.
So there you have it. The next time any of these vendors start throwing around numbers like hundreds of thousands of available apps in their apps store, remember that such numbers matter little. What matters is - do they have the apps I need?
100,000 apps sounds like a pretty good number. I only use about 100 apps on my iPhone and so 100,000 is a lot to choose from. But there was this nagging feeling that the number of apps available is actually a pretty meaningless number. What I really care about is my apps. The apps that satisfy my needs. But which apps are those?
Well, I recently published a post about my favorite apps on the iPhone. I have distinguished between the coolest and the most useful apps. That’s a good list to start. In the article, I have mentioned a few solid alternatives and so let’s add them to the list too. I should also add a couple of service apps for services I use a lot like Marriott and Air Canada. They didn’t make the list but let’s see. And for a good measure, let’s add some of the event specific apps to the list. What could be more important right now than Wimbledon, Tour de France and the Olympics?
That results is a pretty good basket of meaningful, useful apps. There are 30 of them in total and I have all of them on my iPhone. No basket is perfect or entirely rational but a sample basket is useful. Just ask the Dow-Jones. So let’s take a look at how the other smartphones scored. I have checked the app stores for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Here are the results:
BlackBerry, as expected, is far behind and considering that they are in the process of switching operating systems to QNX, the apps shortage is not going to improve anytime soon.
So there you have it. The next time any of these vendors start throwing around numbers like hundreds of thousands of available apps in their apps store, remember that such numbers matter little. What matters is - do they have the apps I need?
