Apple's iPhone and App Store Armada Faces Serious Challenges


When Google (GOOG) released its Nexus One concept phone last weekend to some of its employees, the blogosphere and industry pundits went on a feeding frenzy: Would Google try and release its own wireless phone and compete directly with its existing carrier customers? Could a Google Phone give Google even more power of the information that controls our daily lives? Amol Sarva, founder of the Peek device that resembles a smartphone but only does email, chimed in on the Google Phone, which Google has coined the "Nexus One."

Sarva called Google's offering "every bit as good a piece of hardware as the Droid or the iPhone." To many, those are fighting words. Apple's (AAPL) phenomenal success with the entire iPhone ecosystem (iTunes and App Store) won't ever be matched, but Google has the best chance of anyone to get close. Indeed, the Google "Android Market," which offers applications for all the various Android-powered handsets, now has 20,000 programs available for download in just over a year. Apple had 50,000 in its first year.

Wireless is the next battleground for information manufacturers. The Web has already been conquered on the desktop by Google in many ways, yet there are way more mobile devices in use than PCs globally. Think Google is powerful now? It's nowhere near done.

To that end, Sarva concluded that Apple must deliver a game-changing update to the iPhone in 2010 lest it be seriously challenged in the mobile space by the army of Google Android-powered devices starting to come out of the woodwork. No more minor updates to the iPhone (whose design has remained the same since the original was introduced in 2007) -- Apple will need to bring out quite an enhanced product to compete more fully in the future. Agree? Disagree?

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Last updated: February 10, 2012: 05:15 AM

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