| The famous sales maxim is that a company is well | | | | Within the big world of applications, the rising star may |
| advised to give away the razor in order to continually | | | | be smartphone applications aimed at small- and |
| sell the blades. While nobody is giving away | | | | medium-size businesses (SMBs). One side of the app |
| smartphones - far from it - the real value in the long | | | | creation business, of course, is consumers. Fortune |
| run is going to be in the applications. There seems no | | | | suggests that iPhone apps are a great opportunity for |
| better time to reinforce this notion than this week, as | | | | marketers, but developers are advised to think twice, |
| Nokia officially draws the curtain on The Ovi Store. | | | | especially if the crux of an interesting commentary at |
| There are several high-profile application stores. In | | | | Stromcode proves to be true. The post suggests that |
| addition to the new Nokia entrant, Apple offers the | | | | anyone counting on making a living from writing |
| App Store, Google sponsors the Android Market and | | | | consumer smartphone applications - at least for the |
| RIM runs BlackBerry App World. Apps for Palm's Pre, | | | | iPhone - better have a good plan B in place if they |
| which will be available in less than two weeks, will be | | | | include eating as something they like to do every day. |
| sold at the App Catalog store. There also are sites, | | | | Enterprises, of course, will either write their own |
| such as Handango, which sell applications for different | | | | applications or have them created in a custom or |
| operating system. More certainly will be added to both | | | | near-custom fashion by outsiders. |
| lists. | | | | That leaves the vast SMB sector, which may turn out |
| Applications is where the battle will be fought in | | | | to be the sweet spot for app developers and |
| general, and many of the most important skirmishes | | | | storefronts. This fits into the related and equally |
| will be waged in the app store trenches. The most | | | | interesting trend of the SMBs as the waking giant of |
| dramatic differences between the overall | | | | the telecom and IT markets. If SMBs do show an |
| smartphones offerings will be in the creativity, elegance | | | | appetite for deep smartphone use - and they likely will |
| and efficiency of the apps. The focus will shift to the | | | | - expect these early days of storefronts jammed with |
| applications simply because it is far easier to realize | | | | games and ridiculous consumer applications to give |
| creativity in code than in silicon. The devices | | | | way, at least to an extent, to a greater concentration |
| themselves eventually will be fairly close in functionality. | | | | of apps that help businesses that can't afford to write |
| The all will have good user interfaces and will be | | | | their own. |
| similarly limited by the same power restrictions. | | | | |