Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers Who Struck It Rich on the App Store

Chapter 13: The Future of the App

Smartphones — those cell phones capable of running apps — now account for well over half of U.S. mobile phone sales and growing. By 2015, it’s estimated that the app market will be worth over $37 billion. This industry-wide change of direction means we’re already witnessing a brutal, turbulent transition from old to new. Many companies that previously dominated the cell phone market are near collapse. It’s a bright, terrifying new landscape. A place where iconic mobile corporation, Nokia, has witnessed its profit margins dwindle to nothing, abandoned its core operating system, and watched itself slowly subsumed under the skin of Microsoft, like a goat being lazily gobbled down by a Burmese python. Across the mobile industry, former megaliths are toppling, struggling, or being eaten up.

Even early pioneer RIM — the once seemingly unstoppable maker of the Blackberry phone — has become tragically lost. RIM’s management is, at the time of writing, paddling listlessly as the company’s stock price plummets and its employees write open letters to BGR (Boy Genius Report) in outright desperation. One employee expressed the hopelessness at the heart of the company, “I have lost confidence. While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread… If we create great tools, we will see great work. Offer crap tools and we shouldn’t be surprised when we see crap apps. The truth is, no one in RIM dares to tell ...