Apps. Gerard Goggin

(Fitzek & Reichert, 2007, p. 15)

      While app developers are reliant on manufacturers and network providers, the threat lies in the fact that “[o]perators are large and powerful players” (p. 15).

There was mounting excitement about the potential for programming and development of mobile applications. Developers and businesses were especially keen to take advantage of, and turbocharge, the enormous flexibility of mobile phones, as these were fast developing in power and sophistication. Mobile phones emerged from a set of industries, global and national policies, legal and regulatory frameworks, work arrangements, and user expectations that were quite different from the IT and software industries and were being reworked through the liberalization of markets and the privatization of key entities, especially telecommunication operators. The telecommunications operators, joined by some new players in the form of mobile carriers and various kinds of telecommunications service providers and resellers, were keen to maintain their vicelike grip on the content and services that were offered across their networks. For their part, the manufacturers had substantial control over the hardware on which mobile applications would run—a “first-mover” advantage of being able to integrate, or at least dictate, the terms in which applications would be offered to users of their devices.

      The result was a dispensation that lasted for the best part of a decade, from the late 1990s until 2008, during which the environment for mobile applications was tightly controlled and contested. A wide range of new mobile data services and applications offered by developers, aggregators, or service providers rapidly emerged. The most profitable ones contained games, ringtones, graphics to customize a phone, video, or audio. Some of these services were offered as applications, others were offered via mobile web, SMS, or MMS. Often these services were called “mobile premium services” and offered by a dedicated telephone number range (outside the direct control of the operators), taking advantage of an earlier conceptualization of “valued added services”—that is, services that could be open to competition and that are over and above basic telecommunications ones (Goggin & Spurgeon, 2007).

To offer an app to a mobile phone user, the developer needed to make an arrangement with one of the following entities: a mobile phone operator (e.g. to offer it on its “portal” for download); a handset manufacturer (who might pre-install the application or make it available for download and purchase via his or her “catalog” or dedicated website); a reseller, who offers a range of applications for purchase; or an aggregator, who acts as an intermediary between an operator and a service provider (Goggin, 2011). Suffice it to say, from both the supply side and the demand side of the markets, this was a complicated and confused affair. Despite these challenges, the early 00s offered great opportunities for app developers or service providers who could gain an audience and a following for their program and content, especially ringtones, screen backgrounds, and mobile games.

      Contrast this glimpse into the chaotic world of mobile programs and data at the turn of the century with the one afforded by Japan’s celebrated i-mode system and the innovative attempts of the country’s industry pioneers. I-mode was introduced in February 1999 by dominant Japanese telecommunications carrier Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) DoCoMo. I-mode was an ecosystem of mobile Internet, mobile web, content, and services and, crucially, also an integrated billing system (Natsuno, 2003a). In technical terms, i-mode was underpinned by a version of the HTML web standard called c-HTML. The i-mode was tightly controlled by DoCoMo, allowing subscribers to access a wide range of mobile data services—these were forerunners to mobile premium services and to mobile apps and were offered by approved third-party providers—as well as the most popular services such as search, transportation information and maps, news, and weather; popular i-mode services included music, ringtones, and games (Ishii, 2004; Natsuno, 2003b). I-mode rapidly attracted users in Japan: their number rose to 33 million just three years after the launch (Ishii, 2004, p. 44).

I-mode was widely thought to be superior to the alternative offered by the mobile web in the form of WAP services, and Japan was celebrated for eclipsing its European counterparts in mobile Internet innovation (Funk, 2001). WAP was developed by Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, and Phone.com in 1997 via their WAP forum. It aimed to unify the already diverse kinds of mobile and wireless technologies and networks that were available. WAP was invented before the smartphone, to run on the mobile phones available from the late 1990s to 2005 (Goggin, 2018). WAP is a protocol that allows mobile phones to display web pages. Over the next decade, a slowly growing number of website and web content providers fleshed out WAP mobile web offerings (Goggin, 2018). For the first few years of its life, WAP fell into disuse and was derided as a “failure” (Haas, 2006; Teo & Pok, 2003). However, it slowly gained momentum, especially in bandwidth-constrained countries. So WAP remains widely used today in browsing websites via mobile devices. Often nowadays mobile users switch fairly seamlessly between an app and a web link that, when they click on it, takes them outside the app, to a mobile website. In this way they encounter WAP.

      In this section I have discussed the important immediate predecessors to apps: mobile programming, data, and services; the Japanese i-mode ecosystem; and the mobile web in the form of WAP services. They all anticipate important aspects of smartphones and apps. These histories also point to alternative visions and arrangements for apps that may be now in the background but remain active and could re-emerge down the track.

Apps in the Smartphone Moment

The pivotal moment for apps came in 2007–2008. The iconic figure here was Steve Jobs. Jobs heralded the paradigm shift from desktop computing to mobile computing when he first announced the iPhone. This occurred in one of his breathless signature product launch speeches, namely at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco in January 2007 (Jobs, 2010).

      Jobs announced three new innovative products: a “widescreen iPod with touch controls”; an iPhone (“a revolutionary mobile phone”); and “a breakthrough Internet communications device” (Jobs, 2010, 01:30). He rhapsodized them as three in one, joined together in the iPhone (02:48). Jobs jokingly compared the new iPhone with the well-established iPod, introduced in 2001. He also critiqued the user interface experience of his main competitors at the time—Moto Q, Blackberry, Palm Treo, and Nokia E62. In particular, Jobs underlined that the rival devices did not allow buttons, controls, and keyboards to change dynamically with new applications. In his spiel, Jobs lauded the iPhone, claiming that it represented a catalytic shift and explaining that Apple will “build on top of that [the revolutionary user interface] with software” (08:15). To underscore what he saw as Apple’s particular dedication to technology and design, Jobs quoted computer pioneer Alan Kay’s oft-remarked adage: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware” (09:43; see Kay, 2008).

      Initially Apple’s iPhone was available only if a consumer took out a subscription with a particular mobile carrier. For Apple’s mid-2007 US iPhone launch, the exclusive partner was AT&T (via its Singular, later renamed AT&T Mobility as part of the 2006 acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T). In announcing the iPhone, Apple emphasized that it was learning from iTunes and that the iPhone would “sync with iTunes” (Jobs, 2010). The “killer app is making calls,” especially with advances in integrating contacts and visual voicemail (a collaboration between Apple and Cingular). In the January 2007 launch speech, Jobs demonstrated the boon of touch and swipe with iPhone with the help of a session of browsing the New York Times, but on a website: he was relying on the mobile web, not on an app (Goggin, 2018).

When they did eventuate, the first iPhone apps were all “native” to the device and all made by Apple. There were apps such as Apple mail, Safari web browser, phone, visual voicemail, calendar, camera, weather, clock, and so on. On this model, the software developers were forced to work with Apple to develop its own apps. At this initial stage, third-party apps were not permitted on the iPhone. Apple justified its tight control as a way of ensuring a superior user experience as well as delivering on its aesthetic, design, and security choices and thus safeguarding its emblematic brand (Isaacson, 2011; Ive & Zuckerman, 2016). However, criticism, backlash, and contest abounded, from user communities as well as from corporate competitors