Chris Crum | Staff Writer
What if Creating a Mobile App Were as Simple as Creating a Web Page?
This week, Google released a new Google Labs project - App Inventor for Android. The product is designed to let anybody (as in non-developers) create Android Apps. This could go one of several ways. It could fade away into the graveyard of Google Labs projects that never became full-fledged products, it could get a handful of users, or it could change the web, the mobile industry, and user interaction with both very significantly.
Would you create your own mobile apps if you didn't need developer skills to do so? Let us know.
It's a simple concept, with enormous implications (even for non-Android users). The introduction of App Inventor has provoked a great deal of discussion around the web and with good reason. The product basically puts app creation into the hands of everyone (though you will still have to learn how to use App Inventor itself, as Jason Kincaid points out. Think Dreameaver for apps.) Businesses will be able to create apps on the fly. Consumers could be able to create apps that cater to their personal preferences, and therefore make their devices more useful.
Simplification often leads to wider adoption. Look at what blogging platforms did for online content creation. Look at what Twitter is doing for news consumption (essentially what RSS has been doing for years). If people have a simple way to create apps quickly that can be used by users of any Android device, they are probably going to take advantage, and those apps will get users, and inspiremore app creation.
Too Many Bad Apps?
| Users ultimately decide what apps to put on their phones. It's not like using the web. Your Android device is not going to be spammed with so-called bad apps. Android is an operating system, not the web. You don't use Android like you use the web, you use the apps themselves that you decide to use like you use the web. |
Personalization
Still, bad apps are going to exist regardless. In a discussion about this on our Facebook Page, a fan called these garbage apps. However, what one person might consider garbage, someone else might love. One person's garbage may even be garbage to everyone, except for the creator and one other person, but if that garbage can deliver a useful and personalized experience for these two people (or perhapsbetween these two people, doesn't that make Android all the more useful? Especially when you consider that there may be thousands of these two (or more)-person scenarios? That's personalization. You don't have to use my app but it's perfect for me or for me and my friend to use. You can have your own. In this respect, it's not much different than creating a web page.
Innovation
If an infinite number of people have access to app creation, how can that not inspire innovation? Even if there are tons and tons of "garbage" apps as I'm sure there will be (yes, there will be plenty that aren't even useful to the people who created them), there will also be some that are useful, popular, and possibly even revolutionary. This is a chance for people with great ideas (that may lack in developer skills) to shine.
Maybe these apps won't be as sophisticated as those created by the real developers, but maybe they will encourage the developers to make better versions. MG Siegler made a great point in that maybe App Inventor gets non-developers messing around with app creation and they become more interested, actually learn the skills and make their own app ideas more sophisticated and innovative.
This is About More Than Just Android
It's hard to say whether Google's competitors in the mobile space will follow the precedent Google is setting here, but there's no question that they have to take notice. Even if they don't all immediately jump on it, some may. The more that jump on the bandwagon, the harder it's going to be for others to stay off. For example, let's say down the line, Android, BlackBerry, and Microsoft offer products that follow this concept of simplified app creation. They're going to not only have the ability for users to create their own apps, they'll potentially have a much greater amount of apps for users to access than other competitors like Apple.
We're just speculating on the future here, but you can see the potential this has for the mobile industry, which is already growing significantly in terms of users, which means your business is going to have to pay more and more attention to reaching mobile users.
Is App Inventor a potential game-changer? Do you like the idea of anybody being able to create their own mobile apps? Share your thoughts in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment