My curiosity was recently peaked by an article in Business Week Magazine in which Analyst Gene Munster reported to have surveyed twenty developers present at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
Ten of the developers surveyed were toiling with enterprise applications for the iPhone, most of which, according to the developers, will be available to the public free of charge.
Naturally, I had to read the article over again to make sure that I understood correctly that several developers are creating business applications for the iPhone that will be free to use. Of course, this represents a noticeable divergence for applications developers who typically charge for software poised to enrich business owners looking to optimize their advertising dollars through mobile marketing channels.
If the trend continues to change and more applications are released free of charge, what would be the consequence? According to Gene Munster, for companies watching their budgets, this could increase iPhone’s appeal dramatically. “After all, if you pay $20 a person for a particular application, and you have 1,000 mobile workers, those costs do add up.”
Another possible effect would be the impact on software companies with no plans to make their current mobile software free to the public. This scenario would also have to include applications creators and distributors that utilize profit sharing from the sale of business applications.
There are certainly pros and cons, but it isn’t apparent to this mobile marketing blogger which will be dominant.
Your thoughts, please.
