3 ms·
One of the dirty secrets of the mobile industry, particularly before Apple showed up and spoiled all the fun, was how many execs and chunks of the ethos were ai
by hinkley 2y ago
One of the dirty secrets of the mobile industry, particularly before Apple showed up and spoiled all the fun, was how many execs and chunks of the ethos were airlifted out of Ma Bell. The kind of moat-building we're seeing take over the internet over the last couple decades is something that mobile carriers already had in heaps.
It was also common for carriers to extort very high fees from anyone selling apps on their platforms. People bitch and moan about Apple taking 30% (which is more like 15% now) but I saw mobile app execs complaining about only grossing 30% after the carrier fees, and so you could only either make blockbusters and pay for R&D on volume, or set your VC money on fire to fatten up the carriers and get nothing, except more powerful carriers, for your efforts.
I'm not at all surprised to hear that RIM was only slightly less evil.
- tdeck 2y agoI remember getting some LG phone in maybe 2007 and being excited because I read you could write 3rd party apps and games for it. Then I tried reading the BREW developer docs and trying the emulator, which were both abysmal. Then I read that just to try an app on my phone I would need to pay hundreds of dollars (IIRC it was $400) to get it signed. That totally killed my desire to develop for my flip phone.
- mikepurvis 2y agoIt's crazy to think that that's an ecosystem where paying a dollar or more for a ringtone had been normalized.
- ethbr1 2y agoIf you look up the music industy revenue source breakdowns by year, there was a time when ringtone revenue represented 10%. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-format/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-...
- blackoil 2y agoWas this North America specific. I remember using sdk/dev tools for Symbian. I don't remember timelines, so maybe they changed after iPhone release.
- jampekka 2y agoIf I recall correctly the Symbian SDK was freely available more or less from the Psion start. Not sure about it's different "editions" though.