The smartphone is the...app phone

I've said it many times: the smartphone is the primary interface to the global web and the app is the primary interface to the smartphone. This will remain (primarily) so at least through this decade.

TechCrunch does a solid job of highlighting the core takeaways in the latest Distmo report on apps, app markets and what it may mean for app developers and users.

Chairman Schmidt's suggestions aside, Apple is unlikely to lose its crown as the leading platform for apps -- because, that's where the money is. Android may be activating 700,000 devices a day but aint nobody wanting to pay for shit. Which is kind of a problem.

On the web, about 99.5% of publishers, I'm guessing, cannot make enough to live on. What Google offers, our free content and labor in exchange for "relevant ads" that almost no one ever clicks on and on the rare times they do generates little more than a ha' penny is a bargain most accept because most of (not me, of course) can fool ourselves into thinking that maybe, just maybe, we can make enough money to live on if we hand over all our content for free. Plus, it's pretty damn easy. I mean, shit, just get yourself a free Wordpress blog or Tumblr page.

Not so with apps. They still require work, time, development, support. And discovery is even more problematic.

The Google model of free to start but we all make it up on ads, especially them, continues to flounder when it comes to Android apps. Perhaps in a couple years or so, Google will fix this, though I have my doubts. They were built atop takig other's content for free and presenting it to others for free, along with their ads. It's hard to fit a bunch of ads, relevant or not, on a smartphone screen, inside an app. 

From TechCrunch:

There are now over a million mobile applications available across the top seven major app stores, according to mobile analytics firm Distimo in its year-end report for 2011. And, not surprisingly, the iTunes App Store is still the one to beat, especially if you’re a developer looking to make a profit.

The iPhone App Store generates about four times the revenue that is generated by the Google Android Market, the report finds, in terms of total revenue generated by the 200 highest grossing apps. Meanwhile, the App Store for iPad generates more than double the revenue of the Android Market.

These figures are all that more impressive, considering the dramatic increases in apps using freemium business models as well as free apps supported by in-app purchases. Half of the revenue of the 200 top grossing apps are now freemium apps in the iPhone App Store, says Distimo. In the Android Market, that figure is even higher: 65% are freemium.

And now for possibly the least helpful chart you will see in 2011: