So Verizon is putting out a call to developers to get excited about the upcoming Verizon application store. A little late, guys! You expect developers to turn around and say “sure buddy!” while they’re busy scrambling to get their apps working on platforms that aren’t built from the ground up to screw them over? Because I can only assume that bringing your app to the Verizon store will be a bit like submitting yourself to the Borg: total assimilation with a few notable perks.
Why even try at this point, Verizon? Why push yourself between the customers and the content any more than you already do? The smartphones everybody wants and will soon have are designed to directly access the stuff you want to be a gateway to. The carrier is quickly becoming irrelevant as it becomes clear that it’s the plans and infrastructure (and inside deals) which make the deal sweet. No self-respecting developer is going to take time off of their iPhone, Android, Palm, or BlackBerry project to make sure they’ve got something going in your ass-backwards, years-too-late carrier-branded store!
Maybe if you’d started busting this out a year ago when app stores were still larval, you could have convinced Google and BlackBerry and all these other players to be ready for your nonsense when it came out, but no. Everyone’s already got their ducks in a row, and here you come, thinking you can just herd them into your little basket.
Here’s what you do, Verizon: nothing. Just support the phones you’ve got as best you can and stop trying to put your finger in pies where it obviously doesn’t belong.
i hate verizon – going to cancel my subscription at the end of the month, switching to sprint.
Dear Verizon: I’ve been a customer for 11 years. Why? Because your network works better than most and I do not travel internationally much.
You need to stop thinking you are a walled garden, as me and 40 million of your customers are thinking of leaving you so we can go have fun with the iPhone. The only thing holding me back are the horror stories of the AT&T network… but the minute that is fixed – I’m outta here.
Consider this some really cheap customer research. A million expensive BREW apps are not going to save you…
650.xxx.xxxx
That was beautifully harsh. This was a complete pleasure to read. I hope Ivan Seidenberg reads it so that we can hear his next conspiracy theory. Or perhaps maybe this time he will STFU and learn something he didn’t in the Pace school of business… I guess they never told him not to turn down Apple’s iphone deal when he was earning his useless Masters degree. Seriously, how to goofballs like this become heads of multi billion dollar companies?
Didn’t VZW kinda pioneer the mobile app store idea with Get It Now? Granted it sucked, but I’m pretty sure its been out forever. And what the hell is going to be different about this one anyways?
Nevermind… I read the (f)actual story.
It’s amazing how quickly one little story was able to move me from looking forward to a new Verizon Android or Blackberry phone later this year to counting down the days until my Verizon contract is up so I can go look at AT&T or T-Mobile.
A model of efficiency for that announcement – assuming the intent was to drive their good customers away…
Well hey, who *doesn’t* want a tip calculator from VZW store for only $2.99/mo?
Seriously. Have the Verizon people not been watching the smartphone market AT ALL? This has to be the most tone-deaf thing I’ve seen a carrier do since AT&T said they won’t have MMS ready for the iPhone because of their own database ineptitude.
Multiple devices and OS’es supported by one app store will be the most fragmented and useless POS ever.
laughable. VZW is a complete joke of a carrier.
Of course, they will likely remind you of their massive market share, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
It’s irrelevant if you start driving your customers away when their friends are showing them how their non-VZW carrier doesn’t interfere where you don’t want it.
Seriously carriers: data, voice, sms. That’s all we ever want from you. You are boring ugly carriers with a track record for lack of ingenuity and poorly executed product ideas, do the basics, the world will do the rest.
All those people on the Verizon network don’t know what they are missing with the iPhone, so it is a good idea to offer apps to them. Party like it’s 1999 Verizon!
Oh, and good luck finding those developers.
The author isn’t being particularly objective or insightful here. Carriers, OEM’s, and other mobile players launch app stores for various reasons.
For some, it’s really about being #1 distributing apps, about having the most developers. For others, it’s more modestly about filling a gap in their offering, so when Joe Consumer walks into Radio Shack and before buying a phone asks “You guys got apps to go with this?” the salesgirl can reasonable say “Yup, we sure do.” and so she closes the deal. App stores sometimes are offensive moves, and sometimes they are very valid defensive moves.
Apps as a retail model are early in their evolution. In some cases (e.g. 3, SonyEricsson) an in-house app store is launched, not with the intent to recruit every developer on the planet, but to recruit only a select few for a specific boutique store that enhances the value of some other service. Sometimes these stores are augmented by 3rd parties, in an “app mall”, sometimes not.
Blackberry, LG, Microsoft, Palm, Apple, and others continue to experiment with new merchandising, on device experiences, geographical emphasis, payments options, etc, as do we at GetJar (which we believe, by volume, is #2 only to Apple.)
Eventually, the apps business may be as complex as any physical retail business, with specialists, mass market horizontal plays, boutiques, etc. all existing happily in parallel. Complexity is likely, since with apps, we are opening up the business from a reliance the totally on paid content of the Handango/carrier deck model, to many new free content business models, which themselves require innovative technical and marketing distribution solutions.
The handset world is a fragmented world. It’s likely that the app store world will be fragmented too. This is a new challenge for retailers.
We should thank Verizon for their work, even if it’s only an experiment, a defensive play, given the resources they’ve committed to it, and given the insight that their success, or failure, will lend to the apps community.
To judge every app store, every app strategy, by one standard is to miss the complex evolution of this new retail business.
Apps that have to stick to the narrow confines of the Verizon OS will be sub par at best. Verizon needs to focus on having a strong network open to Android. I’ve been with Verizon for more than 7 years. That won’t continue if they fail to provide better phones with better operating systems.