Wise Startup Blog

While I’ve tried to drum up the iPhone 3G Killer in previous posts, nothing T-mobile or Sprint or Verizon can cook up can compare to the iPhone and its entire iTunes ecosystem.

Apple is such a great company because they control the entire user experience. This control does come at great costs and often can be the linchpin that forces companies to collapse upon themselves, but in recent times we haven’t seen that befall Apple. While you can look back at the 90s and see that Apple’s walled-garden didn’t do well for them, ever since Steve Jobs took over the helm again he’s been able to right the ship and turn Apple into a powerhouse.

iPhone App Store is the iPhone-Killers Killer

Sorry for the redundancy in the title, but so often these days people are consumed with besting one another. So now that we have the iPhone 3G, people are going to be looking for the iPhone 3G-killer (the previous phones were trying to kill the iPhone EDGE). Regardless of how great this new iPhone is, people will still point to the “lessened battery life” and “virtual keyboard”. But thinking these are glaring weaknesses is truly a mistake. Look at the Palm Treos, there are so many problems with those devices that it’s not even worth mentioning the “constantly resetting OS” or “horrible touch-screen” etc. etc.

The point being, Apple and the iPhone are amazing devices because they create the entire ecosystem for their existence. You buy the iPhone activate it on iTunes plug it into iTunes and get a flurry of different apps to choose from, the majority of which being free. Of note, after looking through the app section today, the most expensive app I found was $33 and it was for Bible verses (God loves his money).

Any other phone, Blackberry, HTC, etc. all do not have this great ecosystem built around them. Sure, the Palm has a great developer base and a ton of apps, but have you visited the Palm software store lately? It’s delivered as if the software were 1996 computer games. Sold in big boxes, with an attempt at justifying the ridiculously high-prices. Or the software is sold on WAP sites that make you worry about the software infecting your phone and causing an endless reboot.

I went through the App store this morning and picked out a couple of apps to try (once I get my new iPhone), and will let you know how they perform tomorrow, but for now I’ll share these screenshots with you to enjoy, my apps of choice are Pandora, Box Office (for movies), Facebook, AOL Radio, Remote (for controlling iTunes), and Whirl.

What iPhone apps are you going to be adding to your iPhone?