With 2010 drawing to a close and the iPhone having been out in the market for the better part of 3 years, it is safe to assume that you have at some point either used an iPhone or at least seen one. We all know the insane surge the iPhone brought to the smart phone market, but do we know exactly what triggered this?
Sure the iPhone is a well-designed product in terms of providing a great user experience and excellent features, but a lot of other phones did this for several years and never saw anywhere near the kind of success Apple did with their iPhone. The thing that set Apple’s product apart from the rest was the ability for 3rd party developers to create custom applications for the phone.
By allowing developers to sign-up for their developer program, utilize the provided SDK and develop best applications for the iPhone, they opened not only a marketplace where users can find great new applications which allowed them to use their phones in new and exciting ways, but also gave developers a place where they can sell their applications and make a decent amount of money.
Overall, it was a win-win situation as the developers are happy getting paid for their efforts, the users are more than happy to pay for cool new applications keeping their phone exciting and Apple of course is the happiest of all, getting a 30% cut from every application that is sold and they provide great incentive to existing users to continue using their product and to new users to get started using the iPhone.
The applications platform was such a hit that all other phones needed to ramp up and make sure they provided as robust a development platform as the iOS otherwise they were sure to get left in the dirt. The closest is Android but the iPhone applications are by far the superior ones currently with a much better marketplace and a far greater audience for the developers to sell to. iPhone applications are here to stay.
