The iPhone OS 3.0 is nearly here — and it’s packed with end-user features, but some of the more prominent additions to the OS deal with developer APIs that offer more options for payments, long-awaited push notifications, and peer-to-peer Bluetooth connectivity.
While there’s no shortage of opinions on what Apple should build, buy, do or create next, it sure feels good that it executed on our prediction about the micropayments potential of the App Store. The new transaction types will immediately benefit gaming players like Zynga. The folks at Tapulous are already busy building enhanced offerings including a la carte paid songs. And you can expect many apps to offer their own “stores” in the near future. The new payment options also open the door to more content subscriptions for sports and entertainment. One can imagine everything from pay-per-view videos for events to plain old magazine subscriptions.
Apple may simply be responding to developer feature requests, but the move has positioned it to become an even bigger player in online transactions. Here are three critical avenues for development if it hopes to build a bigger and better walled garden on top of its payment infrastructure:
- First, Apple must take the payment system up another notch by creating its own virtual currency. This could enable inter-app functionality and allow it to find an additional sweet spot for more revenue.
- Next, we need to see more wireless devices that blur the lines about what we consider PCs. Ultimately, iPhone apps could and should function on the desktop!
- Finally, Apple has to finally figure out how to get social. Now that there are thousands of apps, I need to know instantly what apps my friends are using. I also need to know what fun things they are spending money or virtual currency on.
Put those together, and suddenly, Apple will have done what seemed impossible: We’ll have a vibrant paid web and a micropayment economy.
If you look at it in raw hardware horsepower, the iPhone should be better in performance than the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable … But the truth is you can’t exploit it all because of software inefficiencies.
We explored the analytics ramifications of App Store and the potential for Apple to parse through unprecedented amount of highly targeted data in:
Apple The Storekeeper
http://counternotions.com/2009/05/19/storekeeper/
I really like the Social potential that Apple can utilize here. I always wanted to share my apps with my friends and see what they have. If only Apple allowed access to list of apps on the phone, app developers would have easily build that out.
If it is to do the “impossible: We’ll have a vibrant paid web” then web-apps need to be part of the catalogue.
The App Store would also have to have a web-based version e.g. appstore.com Then we’d have the paid-web, micropayment revolution. It probably needs to be someone like Apple with their database of associated credit-cards, make that first barrier to buying a $1 a month web-app seamless.
They should start looking at a payment system and move away from its iTunes account, or they can have Google checkout, with whom they have some history of working relations, as the payment gateway since the buying is bound to increase.
Virtual currency? Not sure Apple’s quite that hostile to their end users!
The App Store needs to be extended to Apple TV. More gaming possibilities, and a fully interactive home shopping channel