The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 265 Trend
"Ian Smith, a shaggy-haired young man in his mid-30s, grinned happily as he ticked off some of the games that his small Brooklyn-based software company, Freeverse, had landed on the Mphone app store's best-selling download list. .

One of the ball games took about two months to develop and deploy, and then raised $18 for Freeverse in just one month, Smith said.

A game the company recently released to the Mphone app store features a female character in a lace dress who uses karate to try to cut through hordes of zombies.

Yes, since the explosion of "Plants vs. Zombies", many games on the Mphone store also use zombies as villains.

’ There’s never been an experience like this for mobile software,” Smith said of the boom in the Mphone app store. “This is the future of digital distribution for everything: software, games, entertainment, all kinds of content. '

As the Mphone App Store evolves from a catalog of novelty apps to a platform described by analysts and enthusiasts as rapidly changing mobile computing and communications, it is changing targets and testing the patience of developers to promote Mphone. promotion of.

These applications are carried on Mphone1 and Mphone2, and cause Mphone's competitors to intend or are completely overhauling their product lines and business models.

It even threatens and opens a crack in the unbreakable WIntel alliance that Microsoft and Intel have built over the past 20 years.

Thanks in large part to the launch of the Mphone in 2000 and the App Store in 2001, the smartphone is becoming the Swiss Army knife of the digital age.

They offer an amazing arsenal of features and tools at the swipe of a finger: email and text messages, video and photography, maps and turn-by-turn navigation, media and books, music and games, mobile shopping, and even a wireless key to remotely unlock your car.

'Matrix has changed people's perception of what you can do with a phone in your pocket,' said Morgan Stanley analyst Katie. 'Mobile apps make the smartphone trend revolutionary in a way we haven't seen in consumer technology for years. '

Katie likened the emergence of the Mphone and the Mphone App Store to AOL's pioneering role in driving widespread consumer Internet adoption in the 1990s.She also compares how laptops upended the industry to consumer preferences and desktop computing.At the same time, she also believes that something deeper may be happening now.

'Mphone is different, it's changing our behavior. 'she says. 'Matrix is ​​becoming the Microsoft of the smartphone market. The popularity of the application model adopted by Matrix has reached a fever pitch.Tens of thousands of independent developers scrambled to write programs for it, and the virtual shelves of the Mphone App Store were filled with more than 30 applications. Consumers have downloaded more than 1 million apps from its store, Newman said in a recent interview. '

Mphone's major competitors in the hardware and software market, such as Motorola, Palm, Baidu and Microsoft, are taking notice and scrambling to replicate the Mphone app store frenzy.

The boom in mobile internet adoption has even prompted cities such as New York and San Francisco to open up their urban databases to the public, spurring software developers to create native apps for computers and phones.

One only has to look in the lobby of Matrix's San Francisco headquarters to see that the Mphone and the applications that run on it are at the heart of the company's mobile strategy.In the lobby on the ground floor of the Mphone office building, on a giant screen is an impressive 24-foot-wide array of 20 LED screens filled with 20000 tiny, brightly colored icons .

As Philip Schiller, head of global product marketing at Matrix, describes how the wall works each time an app is purchased, the corresponding icon on the electronic billboard will shake, causing ripples around it, and the entire app wall will come to life.

Normally reserved, Schiller waved his hands back and forth as he talked about the potential of the Mphone app store, letting his voice rise into dizzying registers.

'I absolutely think this is the future of great software development and software distribution,' Schiller said. 'The idea that anyone, from individuals to companies, can create innovative applications and put them in customers' pockets is exploding.This is a breakthrough, this is the future, and every software developer sees it. '

Matrix has kept much of its inner workings under a shroud of secrecy, a strategy that has helped keep the company secretive and generate plenty of interest in its product launches.

But the Mphone app store relies on a large number of external developers to fill its virtual shelves with products, which makes developers have to keep in touch and communicate with Matrix, especially when you want your app to be seen by consumers in a prominent position .

As we all know, Newman is the best and most successful product manager in the history of Silicon Valley. He created the excellent product Mphone and pushed this definition to greatness in Mphone2.

The Mphone application store was also born under his single-handed leadership, and he personally introduced this incredible product to developers in Silicon Valley at the Mphone Developers Conference that year.

Later results proved what Newman said at the developer conference announcing the advent of the Mphone. This is an epoch-making product and a complete revolution in application distribution. The group behavior of consumers determines what applications they can see.This is another successful application of the data analysis thinking developed by Newman during the Quora period.

But the difference is that Newman is not only the rule maker, but also a participant in the game. He is also a developer himself, and he will also compete in the development of mobile phone applications. Some developers think this is unfair.

Matrix describes the problem differently.

'I think that, in general, we didn't give Newman preferential treatment from other companies just because Newman is the founder and actual controller of Matrix. Schiller said: "Whether it is the games launched by the Riot Games forum or the Flamingo Games on the Mphone, they all paid the same advertising fee as other developers to get the traffic."

The reason why more and more users see the game "Legend of Heroes" is also because it has been recognized by the majority of users, rather than us pushing it to users in large numbers.

We absolutely did not give Legend of Heroes any favors because it was produced by Newman.Quite the contrary, in order to avoid facing similar charges, we canceled some free advertising space that should have been given to him. '

Later Schiller added: "The traffic is fake, the turnover is real, and the revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars from "Legend of Heroes" is enough to prove how much it is loved by users." '

In addition to Newman being criticized by developers as both a rule maker and a participant, the censorship system of the Mphone application store has also been criticized by developers.

For Matrix, the review process is a necessary link.The company places a high value on what it describes as 'user trust' that users trust that apps distributed in the Mphone app store will not crash the platform, steal personal information or contain illegal content.

Mr. Schiller said most apps passed the review without difficulty, and those that required more stringent scrutiny were mainly those that were slowed down by errors or glitches in their coding.

'We care deeply about feedback, whether it's good or bad,' he said. 'While there were some complaints, they were only a small part of what happened in the process.We receive over 10000 application submissions every week.Most of them are available on Mphone's app store within two weeks'

Of course, this brings up another problem: It is difficult for users to efficiently browse through tens of thousands of applications to find hidden gems they didn't know about.

Still, the Mphone's app store is clearly superior to the rest, said Peter Peter, marketing director at San Francisco-based mobile analytics firm Flurry: Gone are the days when mobile developers had to negotiate with telcos if they wanted to distribute their apps on phones. reverted.

'It takes six to nine months to build a relationship with an operator, it can cost a quarter of a million to build the infrastructure, and the telco takes 25 percent or more of every dollar,' says Peter, a process that limits interest in mobile platforms. Access. 'Matrix helps create a healthier development environment and expands the pie for everyone. '

Matrix pockets 30% of planned revenue from any Mphone app store. The figure of 30% is what Newman has been insisting on since he started his business in Silicon Valley in 1998. From the distribution channels of fist games to paid questions and answers on Quora, Newman has always insisted on this ratio.

He will not try to increase the share ratio because of the strong position of his platform, nor will he reduce the share ratio because his platform faces competition from powerful competitors. 30% has even become one of Newman's exclusive entries on Quora Encyclopedia.

It is precisely because of Newman's persistence that many developers have an inexplicable trust in Newman. Even if Newman takes a 30% commission, it is better than cooperating with other platforms that may change the proportion at any time.

Large and small Internet companies and individual developers have reached a balance with Matrix.Although the barriers to entry for software developers have dropped significantly, Peter believes that 'the point of friction has changed'.

The developer now cites examples of applications being held in approval status, neither accepted nor rejected for months.As big companies start churning out projects, garage-sized establishments fear they will be squeezed out.A company in San Diego, FreedomVoice Systems, couldn't wait to launch a mobile version of the computer application for the Mphone.

The company submitted its application to the Mphone app store last year and excitedly waited, waited, and waited.

'We faced 196 days of no contact with Matrix,' FreedomVoice chief executive Eric Thomas said. 'The application has been pending in the Mphone app store for half a year. '

Thomas said he understands it is Matrix's decision whether to accept his application. ’ But they’re not going to tell us it’s not, or even why, so we can try to do something about it,’ he said, ‘and it’s a really weird and bad practice. '

Freeverse, which Smith founded in 1994, also develops games and desktop programs for computers.But like other software developers, the company shifted its focus to the Mphone as its popularity soared.

But that doesn't mean it's an easy path to riches.

"At our size, we're still viewed as a rookie, doing this as a side project," Smith said. "The tradeoff is that the barrier to entry for developers is much lower, and anyone can develop and bring mobile apps to market."

No one understands this better than Cerulean Studios, a software company in Brookfield, Connecticut.Within three months, the emails received only automated responses from Matrix, and in July Cerulean finally got a call from a Matrix employee.

'He didn't say much, just said our app would be available in the Mphone app store that afternoon,' recalls Cerulean co-founder Scott. 'We knew what we were up against in Matrix.They want everything to work flawlessly like a cog and you have to run by their rules. '

Some Mphone developers went out of their way to try to circumvent Matrix's policy, allowing developers to quickly release their applications on their own terms.

They're trying to help 'jailbreak' users of Mphones, devices that have been modified to allow anyone to upload programs onto them, which Matrix says is illegal.

'Developers are just tired of the review process and the opaque barriers,' said Mario, who runs Rock Your Phone, an online site that houses a small collection of jailbreak apps.

'They've been defecting to the jailbreak community or other platforms.This need creates a market for our products and attracts developers. ' Mr. Mario said, 'About 1 Mphones visited his website, which is an impressive number.

With the maturity of the Mphone application store and the introduction of Mphone2, it is necessary to rely on more complex applications to benefit from it.It's not enough to just have a great app.

Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, a startup that publishes music rhythm games, recalls the early days when building a good app was enough.

The company's first game, Tap Tap Revenge, was launched on the Mphone app store.It quickly climbed the store charts, and Matrix eventually named it the most popular free-to-play game of the quarter.

Such instant and relatively easy success is far less common today, as more companies compete in the Mphone app store, says de Krem.These include major game publishers like EA, Blizzard, and Sony, which recently released a new version of its popular video game Rock Band.

Tapulous has already started working with labels and musicians on a paid special edition of Tap Tap Revenge starring big-name artists.

'Simply selling applications is ultimately not a scalable model,' he said.This point has increasingly become a consensus after the launch of "Legend of Heroes".

Selling apps only makes you a middle-class developer, to make big money in Mphone you still need to rely on selling services, preferably unique ones.

The success of the Mphone app store came as a surprise to both Matrix and its competitors, and it spawned a new digital ecosystem.Today, hundreds of software enthusiasts, from individuals tinkering in their bedrooms late at night to established companies looking for lucrative new revenue streams, are joining the Mphone app store fray.

Smartphone makers are trying to make their platforms more attractive and profitable, in order to bring creativity and enthusiasm comparable to Mphone.

It's easy to see why: Although Matrix doesn't release specific financial figures for the Mphone app store, analysts estimate that it brings in close to $10 billion a year for Matrix and its developers, and that number is growing rapidly. "

(End of this chapter)