Driving the evolution of the mobile and embedded software engineering landscape
What happened?
On January 27th, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) finally announced its not-so-secret new e-reader/netbook/tablet mobile device. With all speculation about its name, price, and features now at rest, more questions about the iPad’s potential impact on the mobile and embedded software landscape have begun to rise to the surface.
VDC’s View
There is no doubt that the iPod helped revolutionize the way people buy, store, and listen to music. Nor could there be much contesting that the iPhone/iPod touch further catalyzed the transformation of the ways that people interact with multimedia. But arguably the most transcending effect of Apple’s successful innovation/marketing has been on consumers’ expectations for sophisticated and intuitive user interfaces and for their devices to provide them with highly customizable user experience.
Beyond the effects on the music business alone, the iPhone has helped stimulate the rapid expansion of third-party application markets. Although the ultimate appetite of consumers for yet another device is yet to be determined, the iPad already has what WinMo, Symbian, Android, Amazon, and HP (just to name a few) could only dream of – over 140,000 compatible applications and the iFans, a sea of devoted evangelists, fans, and developers.
If the iPad is a commercial success, we expect that the iFans’ expectations for top-tier functionality and ubiquitous, real-time content will drive a greater formalization of the third-party application engineering community – especially given the iPad’s form factor, which opens the door for new applications classes and higher app price points. Moonlighters and cowboy coders will certainly continue to contribute to the breadth of content and applications accessible, but we expect more, large institutional engineering organizations and ISVs to fuel the next generation of sophisticated apps that will raise the bar once again for the consumer experience.
Enter the Embedded/Mobile OS Market Players
The evolution of third-party application markets along with the growing adoption of non-proprietary, open source, and consortia-based operating systems have continued to squeeze the traditional value proposition offered by traditional OS vendors attempting to compete in consumer-oriented verticals. We have already seen a number of these OS vendors race to strengthen their professional service networks and quick-start integration capabilities.
As more OEMs and ISVs attempt to tap into the mobile application market’s power to create new revenue opportunities and/or to strengthen/maintain their brands with the next generation of consumers, application OS vendors just might find their salvation through the functional expertise that once built up a billion dollar market for commercial mobile
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