Microsoft: Smartphone App Numbers are Meaningless

Posted 11/18/2009 at 12:31pm | by Bart Salisbury

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One might be tempted to think that Ray Ozzie, chief software architect for Microsoft, spent a prior life at Apple. In a chinwag with technology developers at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference he maintained that the number of applications available for a smartphone platform isn’t all that big a deal. After all, he says, “All the apps that count will be ported to every one of them.” Wasn’t that the Apple mantra about  ten years ago?

The crux of the matter, says Ozzie, is that mobile apps are pretty simple to crank out. “Mobile apps require very little development, so it’s much easier to bring them onto every platform,” he told his audience. If a particular app isn’t available now it probably will be in the future, so that shouldn’t be a crucial factor in deciding which smartphone, or smartphone platform, to buy into.

Ozzie’s comments suggest Microsoft is keenly aware of the all the apps currently available for the iPhone. It would hard not to be aware, the way Apple touts this as an advantage. A cynic would conclude that Ozzie is dismissive of app numbers because of Windows Mobile’s current disadvantage in this respect. An optimist might counter that Ozzie has a point: do you really need ‘an app for that’?

Image Credit: Microsoft