Reflection on the change of application store from ancient to present

For software sales, App Store is definitely a revolution. It breaks down the operator's limits, enhances the developer's enthusiasm, and produces a lot more, springing up. Not only that, users can also choose the required software, easy to pay, download quickly, but also to the developers to respond to problems.

A long time ago, a person wanted to buy a more professional software, so he came to the computer city to find the franchise software store, but ran a few times did not find (Figure 1). After returning home, he also linked to the then very expensive internet, search engine to check some or no results, eventually he gave up the idea.

A few years later, "Symbian" mobile phone began to become popular, whether it is office or entertainment, mobile phones have been able to bring more help and entertainment, so he also followed the purchase of a top-end models want to personally experience it (Figure 2). At first he downloaded a lot of recreational games online, but the quality is uneven, some rough, some slow, some screen is not compatible, and some even disorderly deduction fee ... "It seems that the smart machine is the same thing!" He could not help but be disappointed.

Generation of the Emperor-Nokia N95, using two-way sliding design, built-in GPS, support 3g+wi-fi, equipped with 5 million like Sokarzei lens, running Symbian S60 system.

After a few years, touch big screen mobile phone like a spring breeze like the rapid popularity. The popular Android operating system has a built-in app store with tens of thousands of apps, and everything is free, free, and open! A number of Third-party software stores will also recommend a number of high-quality applications, and even a variety of pirated, cracked resources, what is not good? So he "added" Robot "Camp, a share of superiority arises spontaneously (figure 3).

This mobile phone can run a variety of systems, called Brush machine artifact.

Unfortunately, the "superior" system began to become no longer perfect: part of the application can not be installed, some of the game picture is rough, ads are overwhelming and even steal personal information ... In order to ensure the smooth system, he starts the first thing every day is to clean garbage, kill the process; In order to ensure system security, every day to install update xx Guardian, XX Assistant; In order to ensure that the system does not have a small temper, every day to back and forth repeatedly toss ... This is a person playing mobile phone, or mobile phone play people?!

Again disappointed friends introduced him to the "fruit" mobile phone and praised its unusual software store: A large number of applications, play on a lifetime will not be tired of the overall high quality of application, no need to worry about compatibility issues; The most important thing is the creative applications and the flow of extraordinary experiences that make you wonder. Even though it has an unavoidable drawback: the software that looks at the eyes needs to pay for it? The release of its own development software should be strictly audited? The profit of the charging software should be divided into others?! " This is too close, too autocratic, too anti-human! Although the mouth said so, but the hands of the "robot" replaced by "five bags of apple", after all, after the jailbreak can install a variety of crack software, after all, if there is no "apple" equipment you are embarrassed to greet others (Figure 4).

Apple has announced a temporary sale of the product at its retail outlets, as part of the cattle group's frantic scramble for the IPhone iphone.

History

About 15 years ago, Motricity founded Palmgear, the largest software online sales website in Palm Systems, with up to 31,000 different apps, but then, as Palm's decline was merged, it was the prototype of the App Store.

If you have ever used Palm, you should be quite familiar with Palmgear.

2003, the famous game company Valve released the integration game platform Steam. Initially it was only used to update its games online, but with the rapid development of Steam, which has now been used in the global simultaneous release of games and the timely updating of the content of the game, the player can Steam a global multiplayer game, providing players with an unusual, one-stop game experience (Figure 6).

Now, Steam is a one-stop integrated gaming platform. It often holds promotional activities, players can buy the right game at a low price.

The game purchased by users on the Steam platform can be downloaded and activated at any time and place, in addition to providing automatic game upgrades, Mac OS X Support, discussion of community, anti cheating system, and platform. In recent years, many game manufacturers to their own game to Steam platform supply, making the Steam platform has become the world's most popular video game platform.

The 2004, when the online mobile software download Service was born (not called "App Store"), was GetJar from Silicon Valley in the US. It spans multiple platforms, covers a variety of handsets, has about 400,000 apps, downloads more than 200 million, claiming to be the world's largest free app store.

What was Apple doing when the App Store started to sprout? At that time, because the ipod business is very strong, the MAC business is still tepid, so many people just as a MP3 manufacturer. No one expected Apple to take advantage of the iPhone, picking up a number of rivals on one phone and becoming one of the world's leading smartphone makers. What kind of story is this?

The carriers were far more powerful than they are now, and if any manufacturer dared to negotiate revenue sharing with the operation, the company would be impatient to live. Because at that time the operator is responsible for custom mobile phones, is the manufacturer's food and clothing parents, its life and death events are in the hands of operators.

But Apple has boldly broken the rules of the game, the aggressive lion is confident enough to go head-to-head with the operator, relying on a huge number of users to split up with the operator, and signing exclusivity agreements, and later making an App Store that allows developers to avoid the evil operators directly to the user. Not only that, Apple has also introduced FaceTime and imessage, allowing users to freely communicate without the use of operator services. Operators are furious, but helpless, because without the IPhone's operating power, users will lose a lot.

In 2007, Apple unveiled its landmark IPhone, laying its dominance in the consumer electronics industry. The IPhone has become a recognized benchmark for smartphones because of Apple's impressive design, proud Mac os X (which was not called iOS, or iphone OS) and the same landmark App Store.

Now want to come, apple in fact also walked a lot of detours, such as many features are not perfect, there are many restrictions, do not support multitasking, no copy paste can not even send and receive MMS ... This is a joke compared to other smart mobile operating systems. The fatal is that if you do not crack, you can only use WEB applications and cannot install Third-party software. But Apple soon realized these problems, and then rallied to launch the iphone 3G and launch the app Store and provide the SDK to developers for free, once again reshaping the iphone.

The app Store, launched in 2008, is definitely a revolution in the software sales model, with features such as auditing, advertising, 37 split (developers getting 70% of app sales) Inspire developers to create more exciting apps, making IOS has become the most popular mobile operating system for consumers, and has more than 600,000 apps sold in the app Store so far.

The App Store in IOS 6 will usher in an important facelift.

The success of Apple in the App Store is bound to follow in the footsteps of its peers, and Nokia also launched its own software store Ovi Store, a collection of app stores and multimedia content stores, with software already over 100,000, a pity that has been tepid for years. With Nokia fading and switching to the Windows Phone camp, Symbian and its app store are still making progress, but they can't turn the tide.

Soon after, Google also launched a long brewing of the Android harsh and Apple competition (commonly known as the market, is renamed Google Play), although belatedly but wins in the rapid development, only a year to release the number of applications more than 100,000, now has about 600,000 applications. Android's user base generally does not have good pay habits, and the number of free applications, most of these free applications through the built-in ads for profit. Now that Google Play is not just an app store, it has plenty of resources, in addition to apps, games, music, movies, TV dramas, E-books and magazines, which suggests that Google Play is transforming itself into a one-stop content store, such as Apple's ITunes store.

Google Play recently ushered in an important upgrade, the future of the program will be encrypted, and the introduction of intelligent upgrade function, which means that Google is gradually developing the user's pay habits.

April Fool's Day in 2009, BlackBerry Apps World officially online, this is not a joke, because they have been feeling the pressure of competition and survival of the difficult, want to change the reverse must be changed. BlackBerry software stores are currently using more than 60,000, but the BlackBerry 10 has been slow to launch, and BlackBerry devices have continued to fall in recent years.

The world's giants such as Microsoft will certainly not miss out on watching others make a full pot. Windows Marketplace with the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system in September 2009, with more than 20,000 apps available by the end of 2009. But then, with the release of the new system Windows Phone 7, everything has to be reluctantly, but the pace and trend of development are more optimistic. The current renamed Windows Phone Marketplace has more than 100,000 global applications (Figure 10).

After Microsoft's efforts over the years, the number of software in marketplace has finally surpassed 100,000, entering a new phase.

Domestic application stores started relatively late, but their ability to imitate is indeed in the "world-class" level. In August 2009, China Mobile held a press conference in Beijing announcing the official online app Store mobile harsh (mobile apps). As the first software store opened by operators in China, it already has 1218 applications at the beginning of the line, including 205 software, 459 games and 554 themes for all models.

It is worth affirming that mobile app stores pioneered the application store for operators and greatly facilitated the development of domestic application stores.

At the end of 2009, China Telecom's "sky-wing space", the "wo Store" of Chinese Unicom opened the door to greet guests, and was seen by some as a value-added business "two times". Although these stores have a large number of user groups, but the prevalence of a small number, uneven quality or even implied deduction of the trap, and other related clients are also forced to integrate in the custom terminal, unavoidably attracted a lot of users disgust.

2010 is the domestic smart phone "obsession" period, some mobile phone exchange forums and internet companies have launched their own application stores to compete for market share. Functional they are generally more perfect, the actual number of users also have a lot of content is also very rich, even including music, video and a huge number of e-books, but the pattern of chaos is still unable to change. One reason is the failure to form a good ecosystem, and the low quality of application, mostly focused on piracy or crack applications. People are talking about, is this a software store?

After winning the app store in the mobile market, Apple launched the Mac App Store in 2011, with the intention of significantly increasing the number of Mac OS X software, a sword that constructs an application ecosystem as large as Microsoft. With ICloud and Apple's three main content stores (the ITunes store, the App Store, the ibooks Store), the entire Apple Empire has certainly grown stronger.

The Mac app Store features fast installation, quick update, easy management, and repeatable installation, with more than 10,000 applications currently in use. But since OS X's market share is too small for Windows and is growing at a slower pace, it has not really become the primary way for MAC users to buy apps.

The Mac app Store has become more sophisticated. However, Apple has a number of restrictions, such as enforcing the use of sandbox, and so on, while ensuring the security of users, but may make some features can not be achieved.

This fall, Microsoft is expected to release Windows 8, a reinvention and innovation based on the core nature of Windows 7 speed and reliability. The Windows 8 App Store will then go into households (Figure 13). Its advantages are also very obvious, such as a large number of users, a wide range of coverage, low cost of development, access to large profits, and the use of Microsoft's cloud services SkyDrive can also easily achieve documents, music, pictures, videos, applications and other content synchronization.

This is the App store in Windows 8, the number of applications is over 5,000, and the range of applications is wide, and many developers seem to attach great importance to the platform.

It seems that the family have their own wishful thinking, but also under a very large "chess", who will succeed in the future, who will fail, who will enter, who will quit, but also through the market and time test.

Reflection

Although the application store development is good, but the overall view is still a little foggy, even Apple's App store also exist such as plagiarism, Shanzhai, brush list, black card flooding, low income, poor quality and so on. Go to another app store to know that the whole area is still in its infancy, far from mature. The following is an example of Apple App Store, which we must reflect on in the course of the development of application stores.

As we all know, the App Store software audit mechanism is more stringent, is definitely not the kind of domestic like if there is no form. Developers are required to read the App Store evaluation guide before submitting an audit, which is not only demanding, but the rules will change as the new situation continues, and everything is up to Apple (Figure 14)! Although the standard audit system can filter out some "rubbish", But it has also made some good software inaccessible because of its involvement in the restricted area.

New here?

However, there are hundreds of new applications every day, Apple auditors can not be compared to the terms of the detailed test, and some have to simply run, if not too big problem to let the shelves. Such negligence and the present situation makes some rubbish application to muddle through, reduces the store overall application quality, moreover causes the plagiarism phenomenon to be more and more serious.

Because of the lack of effective protection, many large companies are directly copying the applications of small development teams rather than spending money on acquisitions. In the face of such a crazy copy, many small and medium-sized developers are often unable to carry out litigation, their contribution to the creative, but others took off the fruit. At the same time, some small teams with no real work have seen the app Store as an all-time hot and want to get involved in it, so it is through the cottage that some well-known should be used to gain more benefits. These applications often have names, descriptions, icons, and even interfaces that are identical to the application of the cottage, or simply to change the interface, modify the details, these examples can be said to be common (Figure 15). "Shanzhai Wind" is getting worse, and developers seem to be entering a vicious circle that they can't extricate themselves from ...

(Fig. 15) NetEase strongly condemns Tencent's plagiarism and demands its automatic shelving related applications.

Now that the app Store has more than 750,000 apps, the competition is so intense that if you develop a program that is not being promoted effectively, it is likely to face a catastrophe that is drowning in the wave. For users, the App store in the discovery of new applications is not much, the most commonly used, is undoubtedly to check the list of rankings, the bottom of the software will never be dark. As a result, brush download, brush comments, brush stars and other kinds of brush ranking behavior, even in the domestic also specially born this business.

The brush list can increase the exposure of the application, its cost is far lower than other promotional methods, but also convenient to investors "storytelling", so this means is widely used, after all, the use of limited time free, advertising Alliance, micro-blog promotion, forum promotion, site promotion and other traditional methods to do propaganda, cost and effect can never be both. Although the brush list has a variety of advantages, but the nature of this practice is extremely bad, it seriously disrupted the market order, undermining the normal competition, should be vigorously punished.

In order to combat this malicious behavior, Apple issued a notice earlier this year, warning developers not to try to violate the rankings, otherwise it will be completely blocked, and with the ranking algorithm adjustment and lock list design, make the traditional brush list means have failed, let the list presents its most real side.

360 admitted that its products had been placed under the Apple app Store because of the malicious manipulation of rankings, but avoided who was behind the scenes.

According to the survey data, more than 10 million of the domestic Apple users have used jailbreak tools, "would rather spend 4000 yuan to buy mobile phones, do not spend 6 yuan to buy games" phenomenon in China has been normal however, if you do not give mobile phone over prison, are embarrassed to greet others. Perhaps these users can always give the right reasons, such as the need to install a good Third-party input method, install features to enhance plug-ins, beautify the operating interface, so that the device into a small U disk, modify the file to become more personalized and so on, and U.S. law has allowed this behavior.

But for more users, the ability to install cracked software for free is their real reason. Of course, not all people will escape, Taobao "black card" prevalent, some hackers by cracking or stealing other people's credit card supply to the seller to seek illegal benefits, this has already formed an extremely complex industrial chain (Figure 17). These shopkeepers often choose to handle credit cards in a variety of ways, such as purchasing applications, sales accounts, props, etc.

(Figure 17) along these lines on the shopping site you'll soon get the "benefits" you want. For example, itunes deck, itunes recharge, itunes account sharing and so on, this is "black card" part of the industry chain.

In order to increase revenue, developers are often in the software to add ads or to provide internal purchase (that is, within the program purchase, In-app Purchase), but for the last straw to make money, users also have to try to kill, such as shielding ads, malicious clicks, cracked internal purchase, the use of black cards. As this becomes more common, the eco-environment in the app Store will be devastated by devastating damage.

For all these reasons, the developer's bad debt rate is often very high. No income means no money to create a better application, and software promotion is also a small investment, cost recovery is becoming a distant future, the enthusiasm of developers is undoubtedly a heavy blow. So we as consumers should realize: only enhance the copyright awareness, consciously use genuine software, can maintain the ecological balance of the entire industry, in order to achieve a virtuous cycle, which for both sides are good.

In the face of all these circumstances, Apple will not stand idly by, since then increased the audit, ranking algorithm, patch loopholes to prevent users from escaping from prison and vigorously hit black card, and for Chinese users in November last year formally supported the renminbi recharge and payment, making the bad situation slightly improved (Figure 18). But throughout the software store, the overall picture is not rosy, after all, even in the industry leader's App Store, not to mention other app stores.

Domestic Apple users can recharge the accounts of nearly 20 banks, such as China Merchants Bank, ICBC, CCB and ABC.

The way the software is traded determines the user's experience, if it's easy to pay, it's going to boost the developer's income; too little is going to make all kinds of rubbish more popular, no one will try to develop quality products and creative software; the continuous improvement of content retrieval can enhance the user experience and increase the exposure of "non-mainstream" applications; The problem of piracy must be seriously hit, and the laissez-faire will surely harm oneself ... To sum up, the author believes that a good application store should have a wealth of trading methods, the appropriate rate of fees and powerful content retrieval, but also must crack down on all kinds of piracy and other illegal acts.

Prospect

It can be foreseen that the App Store will be a historical trend and unstoppable. Now, the application store mode has partially replaced the traditional software sales method, which has changed the concept of software consumption greatly. Now users can more easily and quickly access to the program, no longer subject to a variety of problems, improve access to resources and work efficiency. Isn't this a "revolution" in software consumption?

On the other hand, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and other important companies have their own cloud services. Imagine how wonderful the world would be if all the users of smart mobile devices were able to synchronize their data easily. For example, a player is playing with the Xbox, and suddenly because the work needs to be paused, he saves the progress to the cloud and then takes the tablet on the bus to continue. When you go home at night and turn on your computer to reply to your email, you can continue to take the risk of not completing the car before.

Imagine, if an application can be leased, then there is no need to spend too much money on the task for some software that is occasionally used; imagine, if the application can be tailored like a building block of random combination, then the needs of different users can be quickly personalized satisfaction ...

Application stores have permeated every aspect of daily life, as long as we maintain the ecological balance of the entire industry, not to destroy the entire industrial environment, developers can create more high-quality applications for users, coupled with the official strict control, then the application of the store will be a bright future, These dreams will come true sooner or later.