Apps. Gerard Goggin

Apps - Gerard Goggin


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(Fitzek & Reichert, 2007, p. 15)

      While app developers are reliant on manufacturers and network providers, the threat lies in the fact that “[o]perators are large and powerful players” (p. 15).

      The result was a dispensation that lasted for the best part of a decade, from the late 1990s until 2008, during which the environment for mobile applications was tightly controlled and contested. A wide range of new mobile data services and applications offered by developers, aggregators, or service providers rapidly emerged. The most profitable ones contained games, ringtones, graphics to customize a phone, video, or audio. Some of these services were offered as applications, others were offered via mobile web, SMS, or MMS. Often these services were called “mobile premium services” and offered by a dedicated telephone number range (outside the direct control of the operators), taking advantage of an earlier conceptualization of “valued added services”—that is, services that could be open to competition and that are over and above basic telecommunications ones (Goggin & Spurgeon, 2007).

      Contrast this glimpse into the chaotic world of mobile programs and data at the turn of the century with the one afforded by Japan’s celebrated i-mode system and the innovative attempts of the country’s industry pioneers. I-mode was introduced in February 1999 by dominant Japanese telecommunications carrier Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) DoCoMo. I-mode was an ecosystem of mobile Internet, mobile web, content, and services and, crucially, also an integrated billing system (Natsuno, 2003a). In technical terms, i-mode was underpinned by a version of the HTML web standard called c-HTML. The i-mode was tightly controlled by DoCoMo, allowing subscribers to access a wide range of mobile data services—these were forerunners to mobile premium services and to mobile apps and were offered by approved third-party providers—as well as the most popular services such as search, transportation information and maps, news, and weather; popular i-mode services included music, ringtones, and games (Ishii, 2004; Natsuno, 2003b). I-mode rapidly attracted users in Japan: their number rose to 33 million just three years after the launch (Ishii, 2004, p. 44).

      In this section I have discussed the important immediate predecessors to apps: mobile programming, data, and services; the Japanese i-mode ecosystem; and the mobile web in the form of WAP services. They all anticipate important aspects of smartphones and apps. These histories also point to alternative visions and arrangements for apps that may be now in the background but remain active and could re-emerge down the track.

      Jobs announced three new innovative products: a “widescreen iPod with touch controls”; an iPhone (“a revolutionary mobile phone”); and “a breakthrough Internet communications device” (Jobs, 2010, 01:30). He rhapsodized them as three in one, joined together in the iPhone (02:48). Jobs jokingly compared the new iPhone with the well-established iPod, introduced in 2001. He also critiqued the user interface experience of his main competitors at the time—Moto Q, Blackberry, Palm Treo, and Nokia E62. In particular, Jobs underlined that the rival devices did not allow buttons, controls, and keyboards to change dynamically with new applications. In his spiel, Jobs lauded the iPhone, claiming that it represented a catalytic shift and explaining that Apple will “build on top of that [the revolutionary user interface] with software” (08:15). To underscore what he saw as Apple’s particular dedication to technology and design, Jobs quoted computer pioneer Alan Kay’s oft-remarked adage: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware” (09:43; see Kay, 2008).

      Initially Apple’s iPhone was available only if a consumer took out a subscription with a particular mobile carrier. For Apple’s mid-2007 US iPhone launch, the exclusive partner was AT&T (via its Singular, later renamed AT&T Mobility as part of the 2006 acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T). In announcing the iPhone, Apple emphasized that it was learning from iTunes and that the iPhone would “sync with iTunes” (Jobs, 2010). The “killer app is making calls,” especially with advances in integrating contacts and visual voicemail (a collaboration between Apple and Cingular). In the January 2007 launch speech, Jobs demonstrated the boon of touch and swipe with iPhone with the help of a session of browsing the New York Times, but on a website: he was relying on the mobile web, not on an app (Goggin, 2018).


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