While Apple faces criticism for appearing to punish iPhone users who download third - company program , Apple rival are ill-use up their selling drive about how open their phones are .
Nokia this week plunge a novel Web sitehighlightingthe receptiveness of its phones . “ We trust the best devices have no demarcation . That ’s why we ’ve left the Nokia NSeries open . subject to applications . Open to Widgets . clear to anything , ” the main pageboy of the new site reads .
Nokia ’s smartphones lean the Symbian operating organization , and the ship’s company cultivates a developer community that creates app for the speech sound .
Microsoft has a like scheme with Windows Mobile . “ We think the best approach is to create a sound platform and grant pardner to reach out that political platform , ” said Scott Rockfeld , chemical group marketing manager for Microsoft ’s mobile communication business . He say about 18,000 software have been build for Windows Mobile .
Even Research In Motion in recent years has made step to enable software development for its BlackBerry sound .
Apple , however , took a very unlike scheme when it decided to set up the iPhone with a closed platform that only allows third - party exploitation through the Safari browser app on the earphone .
Last week , Apple released an update for the telephone and warned in advancement that users who make wildcat change to the software program on their earpiece , let in unlocking techniques , invalidate their guarantee . Some iPhone drug user who had download third - political party software package applications , against the didactics of Apple , set up that those applications were wiped away when they installed the update . They brand complaints online about the effects of the update . Others , not necessarily affected , chimed in with criticisms about the update .
The incident get to the room access for iPhone competitors to speak about their platform . It ’s surprising that company such as Nokia and Microsoft have n’t made more of the fact that they let third - party development , said Avi Greengart , an analyst at Current Analysis . “ There ’s been a raft of talk about feature parity or whether it has 3 G , but there has n’t been nearly as much focus on extensibility or lack therefrom , ” he said .
That could be because it ’s hard to repoint to broadly democratic third - party applications on any of the other platforms , he said . “ The mobile applications landscape is extraordinarily fragmentise , ” he enunciate .
Also , it may be hard to point to the iPhone ’s shortcomings in the human face of its success . The want of third - political party development belike has n’t slowed down sales of the iPhone , he said . Also , since more than a million citizenry have iPhones , the percentage of them who are really hack the phone and who require to is comparatively small , he said .
Apple is likely to open up its platform to development in the futurity , but probably wanted to start out with a shut environment to help ensure its constancy , Greengart said .
It may not be a good estimation to wait for Apple to open up up its development environment , because it might not fit with Apple ’s strategy , said Craig Mathias , an psychoanalyst at Farpoint Group . “ Apple is not dreadfully interested in work up a general - use gimmick adequate to of being a computer , today , ” he tell .
However , Apple is well - put to make more applications available through its current WWW - host approach , if it chooses to do so , and others may follow , he say .
“ Apple ’s at the vanguard of a trend that will dominate the diligence , ” he said .
