Eswar Priyadarshan, CTO
Apple previewed its iPhone OS 3.0
software yesterday, revealing a bunch of new features.
On the consumer side, more than 100 new
features will be available to iPhone and iPod touch users this summer,
including cut, copy and paste; MMS; landscape view for mail, text and notes;
stereo Bluetooth; syncing Notes to the Mac and PC; Push notification for Email
and IM and parental controls for TV shows. Push Notification brings iPhone
closer to the Blackberry world for messaging apps.
For app developers, the game-changing feature
set is the combination of Subscription Billing and the ability to sell stuff
directly from within the app using iTunes Billing. Why is this game-changing?
The combo of Subscription plus in-app Billing
essentially extends the ‘consumer lifetime value’ for app consumers and
provides many more business model permutations.
On the game
app side, rather than buying the app for $2.99 now and playing for a while and
discarding, users could buy a monthly Subscription to the app for $2.99 and get
upgraded features every month or the user could download a free version of the
app that only goes to Level 2 of the game and have to pay 99c within the app to
upgrade to the next 5 levels.
On the
media/content app side, rather than paying $2.99 for a Blip.tv app (as a
made-up example) for the top Blip episodes, you could end up downloading a
$2.99 Blip.tv subscription that has all hot episodes included but an extra
$1.99 per Featured show.
For those
familiar with the mobile content/ringtone space, Subscription plus in-app
billing may mean that the Thumbplay etc ringtone guys now have a play in
iPhone, with $9.99/month subscription apps for 5 ringtones/month and $2.99 for
extra.
We are fortunate to be working in a space
where in some ways the whole ‘ecosystem’ is innovating faster than any one
player – makes us all race to catch up with each other but also means lots of
consumers and media company interest and $$.
Eswar
