Twitter

Everyone's dog says/blogs/twits that Twitter is a synonymous to fail. They've had more than their share of downtime and keep cutting on features to be able to cope with the load.

Although it's annoying at times, I reckon they're being really, really smart about their options. You see, no matter how bad Twitter performs, no one's leaving. In the meantime, they're tuning their software and systems to make it scale like mad. When it's finished, problems will be a thing of the past, they'll be able to start adding new features and, more importantly, they'll be prepared to cross the dreadful chasm Moore wrote about nearly two decades ago. At that point, it'll be sold to the public as SMS for the Web and, taking a look into where the mobile industry is possibly heading, I can see them making it really big (a big clash of interests will surely follow).

iPhone prices

I keep reading about iPhone 3G prices everyday. I don't mean the price you pay when you get the phone but the sum of everything when the contract finishes. The latest (sorry, portuguese link, scroll to the bottom and ignore the rest) tells the iPhone costs about 1000 Euros after two years.

Man, these people really need to learn a thing or two. The correct way of figuring out how much the iPhone costs is to subtract the value of any contract plan with subsidy from the value of the same plan without subsidy. Example: for the iPhone Best 100 (which is the cheapest), you'll need 299.9 Euros to bring it out of the store. The phone is subsidized and the contract costs 29,9 Euros per month, which isn't a lot if you think about it: 100 minutes of voice on prepaid costs about 25 Euros. If the phone weren't subsidized, the same plan would be 14,9 Eur per month. So to calculate how much the phone will cost you, you subtract 14,9 from 29,9, which gives you 15 Euros and then multiply by the contract duration, which is 24 months, so the result is 360 Euros. Now add it to the price you paid to take it home with you and you'll get 659,9 Euros. This is the real iPhone price, not 1100 Euros, which includes the costs of communications (voice, SMS, data).

iPhone apps

Speaking of the iPhone, a topic came up the other day over lunch with the rest of the 7syntax crew. Someone, who shall remain anonymous :-), was saying that 3rd-party consumer apps will give a big boost to the iPhone popularity. I don't think so, but I can see how people might believe in this given the amount of hype surrounding both the iPhone and it's apps. With that in mind, if I were a betting man, I'd bet against companies who focus their development efforts of iPhone apps for the consumer market. A small note: I'll gladly accept being proven wrong as the game is just getting started. Another note: I'm talking regular apps, not games.

The major barrier to 3rd-party iPhone apps is the language you need to write them on: Objective-C is not the same as C. Where a C++ developer picks up Symbian in no time or a Java developer creates something for J2ME really quick, unless you have some Objective-C under your belt it'll take some time wrap your head around Objective-C and Cocoa. Also, there aren't as many experienced developers available as there are for other platforms. And then there's also the fact that one needs specific hardware (ie. a Mac) to be able to develop the software.

Finally, there's history. After Symbian got popular (ie. when Nokia started churning Symbian phones like mad), some companies focused themselves on developing consumer apps for Symbian. To be honest, I can't name any as still being alive and kicking. The way I see it, the only platform that stood the test of time is J2ME and games contribute a lot to this. What happens is that the general consumer market isn't looking to replace their computer with their mobile phone, so 3rd-party apps that aren't gateways to something bigger are pretty much doomed by default. It may happen, but it'll take lots of time.

Update: both Celso and Pedro made good points on Twitter with regards to the iTunes App Store, which I missed. Still, how is App Store any different form a carrier's own application portal which is also easily accessible on mobile phones? Is it so different and so engaging that it'll prove as important as the iTunes Music Store was for the iPod?