If you ever wanted an outsider’s view of Silicon Valley as it relates to the iPhone, check out the brutally honest essay written today by U.K.-based Ewan MacLeod, an entrepreneur, consultant and part-time writer. It explores how Valley-based entrepreneurs are approaching mobile with tunnel vision. That is, the only thing in sight is the iPhone.
The venue for MacLeod’s observations was an AdMob-sponsored event in San Mateo, where they discussed the problem of discoverability in the iTunes App Store. AdMob was there to show off a new service that allows its customers to exchange ad inventory to help advertise each other’s apps. Part of the event included a panel discussion featuring four iPhone developers, MacLeod called “iPhone Dev Rockstars.” Throughout the day, MacLeod made it his mission to take a litmus test of how these iPhone-die-hards felt about other platforms, most notably Nokia’s upcoming Ovi Store. He wondered, why are they focused on 17 million iPhones globally, when Nokia’s Ovi Store will have 400 million supported handsets by the end of 2010? The answers he got included: “Uhhhh?,” “Ovi? What’s that?,” and “Nohhhkeeeaaa?”
MacLeod wrote: “It
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