Friday Food for Thought: Why is the Mac App Store Different?

I had an iPhone 3G for a couple of years. The only “brand” app I installed was State Farm’s. I did so because, if I ever got in an accident (which I didn’t), that would be the first thing to come to mind. It would walk me through what to look at, what information to give and ask of the other driver, contact info for my agent, etc. I never needed it, but it was there in case I did.

Most companies, I think, decide to make a mobile app because (a) everybody else does, and (b) every time someone looks at their home screen, they see an ad for the company. The content could probably be developed more easily as a web app, but that doesn’t serve as an ad for the brand unless someone bookmarks it.

A desktop app, on the other hand, isn’t compelling for a company because (a) it’s unlikely that someone would keep the icon in their Dock after installing it, and (b) very few average users scroll through their /Applications/ directory on a regular basis. The marketing ROI is much lower.

Come to think of it, the fact that I used to work at State Farm probably had something to do with my decision to install the app, too.

I’m gonna go with context again. Not just because I think that is a key mobile attribute, but because I am in the midst of moving from discovery to execution on a multi-channel suite of products for a company… not dissimilar from your concept, let’s say.

Starting with no platform assumptions, we ended up with lots of mobile needs (even in home, the mobile moves about better) and, well, a website (and kiosks and cs portals and so on, yes). Given conceptually unlimited rein for months, we don’t need a desktop app.

Not sure who would.

Okay, that made me think, why is web good in one channel? Well, I think there’s a reason and it’s not context, but the last of mobile web’s ability to USE the contextual info.

Mobile web is (probably excessively) restricted from getting access to hardware like camera, location, accelerometer, different radios, etc. Yes, you can get some with carrier agreements, but that’s some effort, and not universal. Even iOS restricts some hardware access or expansion.

Desktop web (probably excessively) allows the browser to install plugins and otherwise get access to pretty much all the device hardware.

Hence, you can get away without a desktop app, as desktop web is an app portal. Mobile web is, much more just a website. If mobile web worked like desktop apps in this regard, I suspect apps would be much, much, much, much less prevalent. And there would be even more clamor about how we make money on mobile.

I think it is quite simple. I don’t think the average person wants to type on a smartphone and thus the idea of having an app feels right. I would argue that Apple could weed out half the app store if they just let many of the apps put an icon that links to a mobile safari web page in the app store instead.

I think there are some other potential factors as well: how we launch apps on the device versus launch them on the desktop, for instance, and how we were trained to use the web on the desktop versus on the device. But primarily I think it comes down to typing.

Purely speculation, but…

Perhaps it’s because exploration and discovery is more of a challenge on a mobile bowser. While the iOS App Store is not perfect, it does provide what is probably the most convenient means of discovering mobile applications. Once those applications are on the device, you just need to either locate the tile on your home screen or do a quick local search. Performing the same task on a mobile browser is challenging since you may need to try multiple searches before finding what you need and even then, most pages are not optimizes for mobile.

On the desktop, discovery seems less challenging. There are probably a few factors at work here that make the cost of discovery on the desktop lower:
1) Connection speeds are typically faster, so conducting multiple searches is less costly.
2) As Elia points out, typing is easier
3) Users are less distracted (typically)
4) Web pages are easier to consume

Actually, Craig’s comment made me wonder if it isn’t a single factor but a combination of them. For instance, combine the following and suddenly browser usage feels painful:
– Pain to type on
– Launch the browser
– Wait for the browser to become active
– Remember whether to type in the url or search bar
– Wait for the thing to pull up a page… waiting… waiting…
– Go to a page not optimized for my screen (assuming I find it right away)

As opposed to an app:
– Find it on my launch screen
– Select it

Isn’t just a simple case of cheap branding and PR? You wouldn’t want an app on iPad if it didn’t do anything useful, but a ‘branding’ app with all the follow up PR has some (dubious) value in the eyes of marketeers.