And now, the App Economy
Hyped as the ideal way to consume media in all forms — magazines, newspapers, video, movies, books, broadcasts, photos, games — the iPad arrived as a game changer. Beyond the hype and hysteria, it also delivers business tools, spreadsheets, collaboration tools and specialty apps for almost everything. They balance an emerging consumer platform for knowledge and discovery, fun and games, social networking and everywhere communications.
But for the iPad and the coming tsunami of social-mobile devices to revolutionize computing they’ll have to do more than be a better PC or e-reader. So just days after the launch of his media machine, Steve Jobs introduced an entire economy, the App Economy. Coming soon: mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone, with a built-in advertising system.
Meant to be used by the developers who have created more than 185,000 applications in the App Store, Apple said it would sell and serve ads from mobile applications and give developers 60 percent of the revenue. Developers will create 5,000 to 10,000 new, productivity apps for the iPad by yearend, according to estimates.
Suddenly the real promise of the device is that it has a chance to redefine not only what we think of as personal computing, but how we market and transact services in a online economy that can be held in our hands and transported almost everywhere. And that has implications not just for Apple, but for Microsoft, Google, and just about everyone else.
Like we said at We Media Miami: “Almost nothing has been invented yet.” At Tabula Rasa in New York on April 29, we’ll take a closer look at the invention of the moment and where it leads with sessions on the App Economy and design-driven entrepreneurship, as well as a throwdown with top app developers.
