iPhone SDK: Mobile reasons for optimism

Sometimes in life you can have an epiphanous moment when you recognize a stage, and know that you have a part to play in the story that is unfolding.

For me, the story began on January 22 when Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during their earnings call that "we believe one of the iPod's future directions is to become the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform."

This led me to buy an iPod touch and ruminate on the platform concept in ‘iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform?’   

I am a pragmatist so I very much need to separate reality from concept, as well as get my arms around a given solution’s ‘unfair advantages’ relative to other alternatives like ‘stick with incumbent market leader’ or ‘do nothing; sit on sidelines.’

Less than three weeks later, I became a convert. ‘iPod touch: take two’ articulates the WHY and SO WHAT.  In ‘Mobility 2.0 and the iPhone SDK,’ I propose a conceptual framework for thinking about mobile applications and services based upon the native applications built on the iPhone and iPod touch devices to date.

After digesting the different online analyses of the iPhone SDK roadmap event, I posted ‘Mobility Lives! The iPhone SDK looks awesome,’ as there is now a clear sense that (using a sports analogy) the ‘second quarter’ just ended and something new and exciting is about to begin. 

(This is not mere soliloquy, as the living, breathing version of this vision doesn’t become real until the end of June when both the SDK and iPhone 2.0 software simultaneously ship.)

Last night, I had the benefit of watching the entire hour plus presentation of the road map by Steve Jobs and company, and I will attempt to summarize my read as clearly and concisely as possible.

The basic pitch is that Apple is a platform company and that mobile requires an end-to-end approach, something that Apple does exceedingly well (read: Mac, iPod, iPhone).

This is the Microsoft meets Cisco playbook with a ‘just add water’ sensibility.  Microsoft is about winning the hearts and minds of developers.  Cisco is about understanding big customers and delivering solutions that meet their requirements.  Just add water is what we have come to expect in the internet age.

The platform story is pretty solid.  It feels ‘almost’ open.  But almost may not be a bad thing in the sense that there is a well-formed model for across-the-board security and synchronization in this model, and you can only do that if you have some sense of end-to-end guidelines.

Don’t take my word for it.  Check out the video of the event yourself. 

If you aren’t willing to sit for an hour plus and watch the entire presentation, then I have done you the favor of flagging what I think are the four key spots in the presentation:

• (Time - 20:00) Native iPhone SDK.
• (Time - 40:50) Three axis Accelerometer as a Wii type of control.  This is a game-changer in terms of enabling true mobile immersion in a social and networked fashion.
• (Time - 45:00) Electronic Arts. Spore.  Immersive gaming
• (Time - 1:13:00) John Doerr calls the Jobs greatest entrepreneur.  Totally earnest.

Platforms require growing developer ecosystems to really achieve breakout success.  That is what makes Apple’s AppStore concept so compelling.  What is AppStore?  It essentially rides on top of the iTunes model to enable developers to ‘get your application in front of every iPhone/iPod touch user via AppStore.’ 

From there, consumers can buy effortlessly (since their credit card info is already plugged into iTunes) and then wirelessly download the application. 

Equally important, the model scales down to the level of very small transactions, even free offerings, as is the case with iTunes.  Hmm, 100% reach with a friction-free transaction model.  Where do I sign up?

They have thought through the economics (70/30 split, fee or free offerings) and the distribution (they do hosting, order handling and credit card processing, and support wireless download direct to device). 

And to repeat, this approach will reach every iPhone and iPod touch user.  That said, there is a question of how will ad-supported services work because one could easily see a thriving market for products that are locally, vertically or psychographically targeted, and thus have potential to be 100% monetized via an advertising-supported business model.

So when is this available?  For all practical purposes, this doesn’t go live until late June when the iPhone 2.0 software update ships. 

The ‘software update’ terminology is sort of marketing optics because what it really represents is delivery of a new runtime, the SDK and a very cool simulator that helps reconcile a lot of the optimization and process flow between the development environment, the Mac-based simulator (yes, you have to have a Mac to be a developer) and the device itself.

Netting it out: the revised delivery time (February was when the SDK was originally promised) gives Apple the runway to ship and support a robust platform for fully native, functionally rich applications and truly grow an ecosystem, something that I think they only got religion on recently, but now have embraced with full vigor.

Once they got that AHA, they had to talk to a lot of customers, figure out priorities (e.g., enterprise is a big deal), integration challenges, abstractions, etc. This is a lot of functionality to deliver.

In other words, they over-promised in terms of ship date but my gut is that they will over-deliver in terms of what we otherwise would have gotten in February.

Some last notes that spotlight different aspects of why this is a big deal:

• They have a holistic sense of this application model and how it fits within both the Mac universe and the iPod universe.  They correctly see that moving from a ‘mouse and keyboard’ to a ‘touch and turn’ based interface and control system is not simply a linear innovation.
• Connecting the dots, there is a strong vertical play inasmuch as by Apple dealing with the requirements of enterprise customers coupled with the fact that the iPhone/iPod touch is a legitimate mobile application platform this feels like something that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Specifically, Salesforce presented and waxed about bringing their base of 64,000 applications to the platform.  They talked about their strength in reporting and analytics and their 70,000 developer strong ecosytem.  It was an integrated pitch around an integrated device platform story. Think mobile sales force/workforce vehicles riding on top of a ready for prime time infrastructure.
• One thing is very clear.  The system is optimized for game players since there is hardware acceleration of media functions, and the device excels at video playback. All of that is a big yawn moment until you see how the device itself can function as a Wii type of game controller, thanks to the Accelerometer functions. As noted earlier, this is a game-changer in terms of enabling true mobile immersion in a social and networked fashion.  What types of applications will ultimately manifest from this is to be determined, but the concept of consumers interacting with games spaces in a 3-D realm seems promising.
• Some of the language in the presentation speaks to APIs for ‘talking to’ contact data, which clearly means READING of data but might not allow WRITING of data. Similarly, how open are the container functions for things like contacts and how atomic are the information units in terms of a developer being able to extend what contacts can do, subset them or create custom views of this data? Could the developer build an application to skin their contacts and extend them into full blown profiles if they wanted to?
• There seems to be a lot of emphasis on doing cool stuff with photos (it would seem like there is room for all sorts of cool slide show builder and player applications) but there was not a lot of talk about audio or video.  Not sure what this means. 

Venture capitalist, John Doerr, in announcing KPCB’s $100M iFund, referred to the iPhone as ‘the third great platform,’ and a bigger idea than the personal computer. 

After all, it is broadband, connected all the time and personal in the sense that it knows who you are and where you are (you can build location-aware applications, too).

Invent the future, Doerr implored.  Amen!

UPDATE 1: Excellent post by Tom Yager on iPhone SDK first impressions (developer perspective) in InfoWorld.

UPDATE 2: According to analysts, Apple may now produce the same eight million iPhones in 1 QUARTER that they have been predicting for the ENTIRE YEAR.  The positively affects revenue assumptions in a big way, doesn't it?

UPDATE 3: Very interesting AppleInsider article on Apple's exploration of location-based iPhone services.  There are some compelling contextual advertising plays around this one which might enable full infrastructure to be ad network subsidized.

UPDATE 4: Touch Arcade assesses the iPhone's mettle as a gaming platform, concluding that given all of the trade-offs of iPhone as a general purpose mobile platform (versus a dedicated gaming device), iPhone stands tall nonetheless.  Read the comments section of the post, though, as it raises valid questions about whether installed base will be large enough to capture game developer crowd en masse.

Related Links:

1. Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: how Apple has turned gravity into its friend.
2. Upward Mobility, Land Grabs and the iPhone Universe: on the implication of Apple's growing mobile patent portfolio

Comments

[Zimmie]

Apple only *barely* overpromised. They had the SDK in developers' hands by March 6th instead of by the end of February. One week late on a post made several months earlier.

Note that they did not say they would have a final version of the SDK in developers' hands, just *a* version. It was pretty clear to people who have seen new SDK releases that this would mean an unstable, early release and that the stable version would come later.

[Valto]

very good analysis of the whole apps thing, I think apple will be supprizing many industry players with their model (again in phones). Sometimes "some" control is just good for all ;)

How would our lives be without any control?

[Mark Sigal]

Hey Valto,

Thanks for the note. Personally when you get into the bucket of performance optimized where synchronization across mobile, PC and service layer is essential, a little control is not a bad thing at all.

I have written other posts that raise the specter about how Apple's tendency to be a bit of a bully will factor as this ecosystem grows, but then again, life is full of paradoxes.

If interested in delving more into that topic, check out:

The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/03/the-scorpion-th.html

Cheers,

Mark