Developers get ready! iPhone is coming to Israel
We have been waiting for years to put our hands on the desired device. The feeling of humiliation never left us. How can it be? We, the chosen nation, the 2nd largest entrepreneur’s state (after the silicon valley), a top listed early adapters and mobile consumers; we were not even on Apple’s waiting list for a long time.
Like good Israelis, more than 70,000 of us found a way to put their hands on this desired device. We have freed the SIM from its jail and made it speak our language. But that was not enough.
And then, one day, out of nowhere, we finally got our recognition. Apple in a brilliant, tricky move, signed all cellular carriers them all, like only Apple could.
Don’t be mistaken, from what seemed to be a huge opportunity for the cellular carriers to promote their brand, having a competitive edge over the others, they suddenly found themselves committed to sell a challenging number of devices with no actual preference over competition and worth, their entire business model is going to change – no more wall-gardens generating tons of money, much less control over users, demanding partner and a lot of question marks about the future.
Selling one millions iPhones is a true challenge. This means, selling less Nokia, LG, Samsung and Sony-Ericson – some ideal partners for these carriers and a convenient source for incomes.
For Israeli carriers and users, the world is going to change. iPhone is available for everyone, endless number of applications and widgets, new services with many of them for free. Heaven for users, hell for the carriers and Apple keeps smiling all the way to the bank.
Right now the brilliant minds of the cellular carriers are working hard to build some kind of differentiation, attractive packages, unique SDKs and god knows what else – mission impossible . But at the end of the day, all three carriers know their work so we assume that no major shift of users between carriers will be caused by the iPhone.
Who is going to benefit? The user, of course, but not only. With more than three millions iPhones within three years, the Israeli market for iPhone application is expected to be around 100-200 millions NIS a year. Nice, isn’t it?
The market will be eager for hebrew application and local content, and as you know, most people over the world don’t speak our language. So, it is time for Israeli developers to cut their share in this amazing opportunity.
Developers will find themselves free to develop generic applications for the apple’s store or maybe choose to enjoy carriers’ benefits when developing a carrier-specific application. This is going to be fun. At last, iPhone and Mac developers who used to work in the shades, will finally get a recognition and become popular.
By creating significant amount of application, ignoring us in not an option. A strong community of Israeli developers will be able to put us on the map, opening a new world of Mac and iPhone development worldwide.
So wake up, and get ready to change the world. In the next few months, you are going to be embraced by the carriers, interactive agencies, software development companies and many others.
I am happy to take part in establishing the Israeli developers community for Mac and iPhone. The name of the organization is iLoop; and we are going to build a strong developers community to support you guys in making the change.
You can meet iLoop at the Garage Geeks’s place on August 6th.
http://www.garagegeeks.org/blog/?p=194
Thanks for that, certainly sounds promising, and we’ll be the first to join the supportive community for iPhone and Mac developers (well, possibly some might beat us to it, but we’re game).
However, the Israeli market is a niche. Hebrew content, or at least some level of internationalization, are important for textual applications. I think that most of these will probably be web-based applications anyhow, so not a lot of (paid) uploads. However, most iPhone apps are all about… well UI. Touch, motion, intuitive gestures and glossy graphics.
As an iPhone developer I aim for an international product for an international audience (call it uni-culture). Apple has made it possible for me to make my mobile applications accessible world-wide. Well, that’s not the whole truth – I also have to find a way to make them noticeable amongst 100 thousand or so other apps out there. So from a marketing perspective I might start with making some noise in my vicinity, just out of convenience. But the Israeli market is essentially just another GEO. And even if the predictions laid out above are right, I think most of the Israeli money will be spent on international best-of-breed/most popular applications.
You mention the idea of applications being proprietarily sold by a single carrier? I thought we’ve evolved past that era with the iPhone which is open to 3rd party apps, and Android, which is expected to be even more open, in a very fundementally way.
I do agree that we should create a strong hub of iPhone developers here in Israel, and leverage on the developer community to drive successful apps and significant presence in this field. I guess iPhones becoming formally available here is a nice hand-shake from Apple, but it comes so late that we haven’t really been waiting for it – not users nor developers.
I also agree that the carriers may have failed the prisoner dilema here(http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/דילמת_האסיר) and got themselves bundled up in a situation that they can’t afford to opt out on, but that might be not very profitable for them, or, furthermore, undermine much of the basis for their profit model.
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