Apps. Gerard Goggin

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issues (Cooke, 2020). Jailbreaking is a long-term issue for the users of many other smartphone and app ecosystems and for their manufacturers, who are often displeased with default or pre-installed software (this is sometimes termed “bloatware”) (Cavusoglu et al., 2020). More on this shortly.

      After months of considerable backlash from software developers, on July 10, 2008, Apple launched its App Store. It announced a software developer kit (SDK) for native iPhone apps in October 2007 and released it on March 6, 2008, claiming 100,000 downloads in the first four days and topping 250,000 by early June (Apple, 2008a, 2008b). Later that month Jobs unveiled “what we call the app store” (Jobs, 2008, 00:39). As an “exclusive way to distribute iPhone applications,” Jobs suggested that most users would download apps “over the air, right to the iPhone” (2:25). He laid out a “business deal” whereby developers would pick a price, then Apple would take 30 percent of the revenue (for hosting the credit card and payment systems), and developers would take 70 percent (3:25). This is the basic structure of Apple’s deal with developers, and it has held firm over the intervening years, though it’s coming under increasing challenge. In August 2020, for instance, Apple kicked Epic Games, the owner of the popular game Fortnite, off its app store, on the grounds that it allowed players to purchase in-game items directly and hence avoided giving Apple its 30 percent cut. Epic responded with a blistering video and social media campaign.

      Android is an open-source Linux-based software stack that includes a core set of system apps for email, SMS, calendars, contacts, Internet browsing, and other operations (Android, 2020a). Android Inc. began in 2003, in Palo Alto, as a startup led by Andy Rubin. Rubin was interested in developing an OS for digital cameras, but then diverted Android Inc. to focus on smartphones (de Looper, 2019). Google acquired Android in 2005 and announced the development of its Android OS in 2007, after partnering with handset manufacturers and carriers such as Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and T-Mobile.

      Android has firmly established its global dominance and its place as the major alternative to Apple’s view of the apps work. However, it is important to note that there do exist many other kinds of app stores. In chapter 3 we’ll look at the teeming world of Chinese app stores, which have managed to relegate Apple and Google to minor positions. Before 2008, too, there were a wide range of mobile data and content portals, websites, services providers, and so on, as we have seen. Some of these, such as Nokia or Vodafone World, were leaders and were more well known. These mobile equipment vendors and network operators were especially in the ascendancy in a diverse and fragmented market. In the transition, Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market battled to establish themselves in the face of well-capitalized and savvy contenders. The companies that entered the list of the “app store wars” included Blackberry World (launched in April 2009), Nokia’s Ovi, Windows Marketplace, Palm Catalog, Sony App Store, and Samsung Galaxy Store.

      App stores mean little without the apps themselves. The sheer number of apps launched in the 2008–2013 period was extraordinary.

      Apps and their users are much younger than computer software previously had—or Internet or mobile phone applications, for that matter. Children figured prominently as mobile phone users, as the technology became more widespread. This trend accelerated with smartphones, but very young children became avid users of apps—and fast created a profitable market for app developers and app stores. Adults came to rely on apps to “babysit” children; thus apps displaced television from this role. Apps also became a byword for parental anxieties about the negative effects of overabsorption in digital media devices and cultures. It’s fair to say that such anxieties are neither universal or general. As Shakuntala Banaji points out in her study of media-rich and media-deprived children in urban and rural settings in India, how we understand agency and cultural meaning depends on pivotal conditions such as class, responsibilities, labor, and knowledge (Banaji, 2015).

      Once

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