Jase Bell made a prediction in his startup column in yesterday’s local press regarding the proliferation of small home-based projects in response to hard times in corporationland:
“With the amount of high-tech skills out there I predict a new wave of micro businesses (with five employees or less) over the next three years. Their sales area will be global instead of local and their areas of expertise will be broad and far reaching.”
Read more: belfasttelegraph.co.uk
This has a resonance somewhat further afield too – the Wall St Journal last week covered the emergence of the app store cottage industry as a growth sector in Silicon Valley. The iPhone and it’s appstore is this sub-industry’s poster boy of a platform built for the masses.
The low cost barrier to entry (SDK is free, while publishing an app costs $99), the ensembled army of early-adopting geeks and the global reach leverage of an appstore listing make for an attractive ecosystem to programmers. This has resulted in an abundance of apps for every conceivable smart phone task. At a guess I’d say the OS provides for 80% of the functions I use my netbook for. A computer in the pocket.
But I don’t like the iPhone.
Continue reading ‘Product Over Platform’
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