Analysis: App Stores in detail

In the last few months, RIM (Blackberry), Microsoft, Nokia and the Android consortium have all moved to emulate Apple's highly successful App Store model.

The new app stores coming online create a great deal of choice for mobile application developers, but also present a challenge around developer resources.

Developers need to make some important calls now on which platforms provide the most opportunity. Which are the most popular among users? Which are the most cost-effective to develop for?

Hopefully, this table and the accompanying analysis will assist in making these choices.

The market

Apple's App Store boasts a mind-blowing 800 million downloads for its first eight months of operation - a complete game changer for mobile telephony. Competing with that kind of demand is going to be difficult for any challenger.

That said, there are as many Blackberry-enabled phones and Windows Mobile devices in the wild as iPhones. There is certainly opportunity aplenty should these platforms, and their associated app stores, provide the ease-of-use that has helped bring about Apple's success.

The potential reach for Blackberry App World and Android Market are both geographically limited at present. Both Google and RIM are expected to make announcements on this matter in the near future.

Terms

The terms available to developers are markedly similar, but the devil is in the detail.

Four app stores offer a 70 per cent share of the sale to the developer, but RIM's late entry to the market is compensated with an offer of 80 per cent.

Apple product marketing manager Marcus Annett told iTnews that the company keeps 30 per cent of sales for profit and payment of credit card interchange fees, while Android developer relations lead Dan Morrill said the 30 per cent cut is used to pay carriers and billing settlement costs.

Nokia meanwhile, offers mobile carriers and additional cut of the money to allow for direct billing on mobile phone bills with participating carriers.

All five offer registration fees to cover the cost of accrediting developers to ensure a certain degree of quality.

The Android Market registration fee of US$25 certainly offers the best value - Microsoft Marketplace represents the worst, given that its US$99 fee is charged annually.

The more interesting fees are those charged for every new application uploaded for sale or free download.

While Apple, Nokia and Android offer development teams the ability to spin out as many new applications as they see fit, Microsoft and RIM charge on a per app basis (US$99 per app at Microsoft, US$200 per ten apps at RIM). And to make matters worse, both count an update to an existing app as a new one for the purposes of these fees.

RIM may also face challenges if it insists on its users only being able to pay for apps on Blackberry App World via PayPal.

For more on the developer resources offered for each of these mobile platforms, read on to  Page 2.

Resources

All four vendors offer a wealth of online resources to aid mobile developers.

Apple

Apple's developer web site offers online tools including sample code libraries, example applications and hundreds of hours of video tutorials.

But first Apple developers need to be familiar with developing for the Mac OSX environment by downloading the X-Code IDE (integrated development environment).

Apple product marketing manager Marcus Annett said Mac OSX provides a wide range of services developers can call on to power their applications.

"There are thousands of APIs [application program interfaces] to call on - be it 3D graphics, battery management or location awareness," he said. "You simply call on the operating system and it figures stuff out for you."

Post-sale, the App Store also offers developers reporting tools around sales and feedback

"Apple offers very good tools to see where their sales are coming from region-by-region," Annett said. "Plus there are tools to review comments on their apps. Only people that have downloaded the apps are able to comment, ensuring a level of quality. This is the kind of feedback you could never get from traditional channels."

Nokia

Nokia offers developers a set of APIs, tools, SDKs, and support for multiple run times such as native C++, Open C, Java, Web Runtime (WRT) and Flash.

The Finnish company is currently looking into support for Qt - a cross platform software that enables seamless native development across multiple platforms, from desktop to S60, maemo and Series 40.

Nokia's WRT and Flash support allows developers with knowledge of simple and popular technologies such as Flash, HTML, CSS and Javascript to build powerful applications to access platform services such as contacts, accelerometers and GPS information.

Microsoft

Windows Mobile developers require several Microsoft development tools to get started.

Developers first need a copy of Visual Studio 2005 or 2008, which costs between US$299 and US$799.

Academic developers can gain access to the development tool for free via the DreamSpark program, while the BizSpark program provides Visual Studio and SQL Server free for start-ups operating for less than three years with under US$1 million in revenue.

Developers are also provided free downloads of the Windows Mobile software development kit (SDK) and ActiveSync.   

The advantage of developing applications for Windows Mobile is that the same tool (Visual Basic) can also be used to create apps for desktop applications.

RIM (Blackberry)

RIM's 'Blackberry developer zone' gives comprehensive documentation and downloads around software development.

Blackberry apps can be built as Java or .Net client applications or as web-based applications.

Web-based Blackberry applications can be built using Microsoft Visual Studio in combination with RIM's free download of the Blackberry MDS Simulator and Blackberry Device Simulator.

Java-based client applications can be built using RIM's free download of the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE). RIM also offers a JDE plug-in to the Eclipse open source development tool.

Blackberry Enterprise Server applications can be built using free plug-ins to rapid application development environments Microsoft Visual Studio or Eclipse.

Android

The Android developer web site features all the tools and downloads an Android developer needs to get started.

Android apps can be built in Java or with the aid of custom tools and emulators.

Initially, developers of Android applications need to download the free Android Software Development Kit.

Android also offers a plug-in for the open source Eclipse development tool.

Five months since its launch, Android developers have already created more than 2300 free and priced mobile applications.

"Android was built from the ground up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications, and has all the features users expect from a modern phone, such as multitasking, integration across apps, and access to hardware and system level functions," said Android Developer Relations Lead Dan Morrill.

"Additionally, Android has no privileged framework APIs, and all apps are created equal: applications can interact with each other and even replace the system default apps."

Android Market is a "faster and more open" distribution channel, Morrill said.

Once developers have registered as a publisher, they do not need anyone's permission to deploy applications and can self-sign their own applications without being stung with an application registration fee.

"Developers decide which app to offer, in which countries, when it becomes available, and how much it will cost," Morrill said.