Symbian Ecosystem App Stores
As a mobile developer, I obviously welcome the latest craze for application stores. However, I came across Symbian Foundation’s plans today which has set me thinking.
The Symbian Foundation plans to have a ’store of stores’ which will aggregate other store offerings. What does this mean for the end user?
Imagine a user on Orange, using a future Samsung S60 device. Assuming for a moment that Orange hasn’t asked for all the other store icons to be removed from the phone, the user will have icons for the following stores…
- Orange
- Samsung Innovator
- Nokia OVI
- Symbian Foundation ‘Store of Stores’
At first sight, you might think this helps the end user because there will be competition between the stores. However, in each case the end user will be asking things like… How will I be charged? Will I pay for data download? Can I download again in the future? How do I compare prices across stores? Which store contains the latest version of a given application? … and so on.
Hence, I think the Symbian Foundation idea of a store of stores is great - if that’s the only store icon on the phone. However, I suspect it won’t be the one.
I suspect there’s only likely to be one store icon on the phone. For a particular phone, the organisation with the most ‘voice’ will end up with their store icon on the phone. If history repeats itself, it will be the icon with the worst store offering.
This is a moment in time when network operators, handset OEMs, Nokia and the Symbian Foundation can do some joined up thinking. However, I suspect, as usual, each will go their own way which will result in end user confusion, more work for developers and a sub-optimal solution.
The problem is that it’s very difficult for companies to communicate and cooperate. It’s even more difficult to do so when most parties want to profit out of it.
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