MEX: Appstores and their consequences, Hampus Jakobsson, TAT

TAT: licenses UI software, does inspirational design. Kit ships on 10% of all devices 2008. 140 people, Sweden, US, Korea.

Apple and Palm are arriving and doing impressive things - this is frustrating for incumbents, but empowering.

How could it be improved?

• Context: location, time could be used to funnel users towards appropriate applications.
• Discovery is like Digg - the top apps get loads of traffic, it's hard for others to break in.
• No try before you buy.
• No tell-a-friend.
• No recommendations or discussions.
• Less uber-control by one player would help. How about co-branded stores (the MEX store)? There's no transparency.
• Categories should be premium ($4.99+), standard ($0-4.99) and free.
• Get What's Hot from derivatives.
• Measure and rate by value = price times volume
• Sort on ratings not volume
• Add 25% with few ratings to improve discovery of new apps.
• Why not friend-to-friend sales?

App stores will be just the start of advanced personalisation. When Apple released their phone there was no app store - the first ones were hacked-in.

History of personalisation: started out with contacts and SMS, then pictures/videos/music, now apps and bookmarks. Phones have infinite uses once you add applications.

We have to make the UI more dynamic (cough, says vendor of dynamic UI solutions). Apparently UI should be experience based and match the real world, anticipate your needs, etc.

Mobile phones "steal us from one another" in their attention-grabbing.

A lot of Apples innovation was around the payment experience, and is amazing.