Apple countdown: App # 1 billion to be downloaded tomorrow

The success of the Apples App-store (from which you can dowload applications to your iPhone) has taken the world — and Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and the lot of competitors — by surprise. Launched only some 8 months ago, Apple now gears up to celebrate download number 1 billion. As we speak the count has just surpassed 992 millions compared to 956 millions one week ago. With this pace it looks like they’ll hit the 1 billion mark tomorrow.

Move towards ubiquitious computing
The iPhone/application store-phenomenon is — I think — by all means extremely interesting. To me it witnesses the coming of a new era in which computers finally move away from being office-machines and steps into real life. Moves away from the keyboard-writing metaphor into an intuitive-omnipresence paradigm. Let go of ridig written “commands” (“run” or “save”) and embracing a much more physical interface, in which it understands instructions like touches, moves, blows and noice.

Draws on and urges to transparancy
In the iphone/application store combination I also see the embodyment of an era of openness and transparancy. The first tech-pieces that actually holds the possibilities of large-scale drawing the tons of data out there in the cloud (that is: the internet) together in applications, that are really meaningfull. That finally promises to condensate the vast amount of information and utilize them in applications that runs intuitively and in context with you’re present whereabouts, on your handset. And that thereby fuels the transparency paradigm: give and you shall be given.

Application store
Apple not only created a great piece of technology (the iPhone). They also opened up their APIs allowing everybody to develop their own applications which could run on the iPhone, set up the application store which is tied into all iphones and ipod touches, making one single one stop marketplace for consumers to find and buy new applications. And then Apple adopted a revenue sharing model with developers (70 percent to developers, 30 percent to Apple), giving a fantastic incentive for devellopers to create apps. In the wake of this, all other mobile manufactures and their surroundings have woken up and are now all getting into the race as well. Nokia is set to open their app store (OVI) in may, and Microsoft their maketplace over the summer, all copying the apple-move.

Keynote at Børsen Executive Club the 19th of may
I’ll elaborate on this on the 19th of May, when I do a keynote-presentation at Børsen Executive Club in Copenhagen. In my presentation I’ll give a run-through of my own favorite apps, highlighting exactly how the era of the mobile phones that are dawning also paves way for a new user-experience and a new business possibilities for virtually all industries. The presentation explains in a simple and easy to understand what the new phones, apps and app-stores are all about, and ties on to how the new phones draws on the fruits of the social network-revolution, on the emergence of crowdsourcing and customermade technologies, how it builds on longtailed, networked, economics and how it heralds the coming of an age of openness, not only in the social sphere but also on the data and applications.