Every other news article on the iPhone Apps Store includes a mention of how Apple is the ogre that controls who can pass over their bridge to the iPhone users. This monopoly is always compared to the other famous tech monopoly, Microsoft and its Windows product. The latest unhappy iPhone App Store developer is none other than Google.

On one hand, it is bizarre that a big company like Google cannot get their press releases and software releases synch up. On a side note, they did have a misfire on their Chrome browser as well. But it was not due to the delay of a competitor but by the efficiency of snail mail in Europe and the lack of a holiday. (Consider the irony: snail mail throwing of a Internet giant and the lack of a holiday in Europe compared to the U.S.)

On the other hand, it is nice to know that all developers, big and small, will be made to dance to Apple’s unknown App Store rules and policies.

The Mobile OS landscape is in flux. But the question is who will be the winners going forward. My guess is that the older operating systems will just not provide the experience that user will grow to prefer. They will still have their niches, but they will be squeezed out of new applications.

The two newest operating systems are the Apple iPhone and the Google Android. Google has had a slow start out of the gate than Apple, but the software will appeal more to developers and possibly users as Google uses its knowledge and money to port the Google applications to the Android platform.

Apple strength is that it keeps tight control over its platform and its applications. That is also its potential weakness. This rigid platform provided users who were unfamiliar with the mobile web and mobile devices in general a pretty and safe place to learn and experiment with their new devices. But more technical users are already chaffing to hack the iPhone.

By its very nature, Google is going to be as hands off as possible. This is not due to good will on its part. Google is interested in making money on ads, not being a type of mobile police officer. It is even ignoring the small amounts of cash that it could make from cut in app download revenues. Google is interested in preserving its cash cow and can be generous on every other aspect of its operating system and app store. What is really interesting is how older companies like Microsoft approach the new mobile market with the same outlook as before. Someone at Microsoft should really sit down with Ballmer and explain the rational in giving away software. They might want to start by showing how much money Google could make with mobile ads if it can corner the market the way that it did on the regular Internet.

If you follow the mobile market, then you know that there are essentially 4 operating systems that are really making wavies. The two oldest are the Blackberry, which is closed source and private, and Symbian, which was recently purchased by Nokia and made open source and free. Both of these systems are rather old school. Their basic code was written before the days of social networking and user generated content. The last two are the newest, the Apple iPhone, which is closed and private, and Google’s Android, which is open source and free. Both of these two systems were freshly created with the newest Internet applications in mind.

There are lots of other programming languages for mobile devices that you just don’t hear much about anymore. Sometimes you hear about the open source effort of Linmo, a kind of open source Linux for smartphones, mentioned in the same sentence as the Google Android, which borrowed heavily from it. But without a big company and an even bigger marketing effort, it is unlikely that it will be able to compete with other free, solid operating systems. The other big loser is Java for mobile phones, also called J2ME. It has dropped in importance so much that Handango, a top distributor of mobile applications, will not even distribute free J2ME applications anymore. Ouch!

Thanks for a post on MarkJNet, I have a new favorite web site (right below Geogad, of course). It analyzes what downloadable apps are available from the iPhone App Store. Its lovely interface breaks down the information in all sorts of interesting ways such as by subject like Travel. It also breaks the apps down by price, when they were uploaded, how many times they were downloaded and their rankings.

Keep up the good work, MarkJNet.

Two interesting reports came out today. At first glance, they would seem to have nothing to do with each other. But as you begin to think about, you can see that they are very closely tied.

The first report lists the top 10 handsets in the U.S. Not too surprisingly, the top spot goes to that business person’s favorite, the Blackberry curve with 26% of the market. The closest competitor is the consumer friendly Apple iPhone at 9%. Not bad for iPhone since it has only been selling for over a year while the Blackberry is often purchased by a person’s employer.

The second report states that a measly 12% of Americans have used high-end mobile apps like email and video. These reports sound like they are coming from different countries. What people who work in the mobile space to create the next great mobile service forget is that most Americans don’t even try these services.

There is still much more education of the mobile consumer to come. In the next stage of mobility, the iPhone will be more important than the Blackberry. Both are great devices and are bringing the consumer what they want. But the iPhone with its limited feature set on its clean, intuitive user interface is the most likely device to teach consumers what they can do with the phones.