CTIA Round Up and Why does Everyone have an App Store?

We’re back from CTIA and overall is was pretty meh….

What’s up with everyone having their own app store?  iPhone has it’s iTunes App Store, Blackberry has App World, Nokia has Ovi, Erikson has an App Store, Windows has an App Store, and the list keeps on going.  Just about everyone has their own app store today and the benefit of having all these stores is that you get to program for each one!  If you want to build for the iPhone it needs to be in Objective C, Flash lite for Nokia’s Ovi, and Java for Blackberry’s App World.

Someone should set up a group like the MMA, but for mobile apps.  Something like this would help make the industry more unified and organized, let alone cause less complaints among the end users and developers.  The only people the current system is benefiting are the handset makers. The rest of us are getting the short end of the stick.  Check out this interesting article from last June that I recently found – What if…Microsoft Had a Windows App Store? An interesting read about what if Microsoft in ‘95 was like Apple today.

Getting back to CTIA, Nokia’s Ovi store was not too impressive, plus how many people are rockin’ Nokia’s nowadays?  They do have a pretty cool map feature, where you can overlay an application over their built in maps, but the graphics seemed dated.

Motorola Cliq – one word – ‘meh….’  This was the phone everyone was talking about, that’s probably because it was the only phone or tech that was being hawked.  The UI was clunky, boring, and confusing.  If you can’t figure it out instinctively, then you have a problem.  You know what does really get me to dig on a phone?  Dance Dance Revolution.  Really Motorola?  A little late to the game.  Rock Band or Guitar Hero would’ve been a better option – no one wants to play DDR at your booth, give it up.

Overall, there wasn’t much new technology.  Sure Microsoft released it’s Windows 6.5 Mobile, but that wasn’t very impressive either.  Again, clunky with useless social networking integration that no one really needs.  Who uses the Window’s Live Social Networking functionality anyways?

The other big thing that everyone one seems to be doing is geo-tagging one’s location and updating it through one social network or another.  Whether it’s a propriety network or Facebook, they all have a ‘unique solution’ that let’s your friends know where you are at any given time.  Maybe it’s just me and I’m an old fuddy-duddy (with a word like that I sure am), but I don’t want everyone to know where I am.  What if I have some crazy stalker and they’re always wondering where I am?  How much easier is it for them to find me know?  No thanks!  You can keep your geo-tagging, hopefully this is a fad that won’t take off.

Otherwise, I can be fairly confident in saying that the show seemed pretty thin.  The floor was empty on Thursday and Friday and the offerings were slim pickings.  What about you guys?  See anything that impressed you?