tim said:
i don't think you understood what i meant, which is essentially that there's absolutely no reason why there'd only ever be one channel for consumers to buy applications on desktop OSes.
the app store is great for large and small companies and perfect for consumers.
No I understood what you meant.
Apple set a precident with the iphone about installing apps only from their store (unless you jailbreak and use cydia), Microsoft has followed suit with WP7 (99% certain on this) and to a point so has Google (they still allow side loading but some custom roms like the kindle fire don't). They all take a cut of the revenue from app sales.
Apple introduce a desktop version of the app store and microsoft does too (pretty sure this was in the pipeline before apple introduced it). Both take a cut of the sales from the apps on their os (30% iirc). At the moment you can still load apps from other locations (ie dvd etc) but just think about this from a os developer standpoint, hell in the case of the Apple mac mini there is no optical drive so you're only left with download options......
Now they get 30% of ALL apps installed on their os from their store, they can police the apps which get installed, so no virus/trojans etc, no pirated software (although I'm sure the hackers would find a way round it), no competing apps (seen it with apple in the past on iOS apps). Apple/Microsoft realise they get very big profit from doing nothing but 'advertising and hosting' the software, just think how much 30% of adobe suite etc is, or how quickly 30p from every £1 adds up,
Not straight away but gradually the os gets locked down so you can only install from the stores like on their phones...
Program developers either sign up (they may like the reduced piracy argument too) or stop developing apps for the platform, not likely due to 2 largest platforms. So what do they do, I can't see the big comapnies like Adobe taking a decrease in profit so prices go up to compensate.
In the end what basically happens is we lose price competition on software, prices increase due to the store cut and the consumer has no option but to buy from the store.
Now I'm not saying this will happen straight away and I honestly hope that it doesn't but if you think about it from a purely business perspective of the people who provide the OS it's not exactly outside the realms of possibility. I'm pretty sure Apple makes a profit from the itunes app store even if they try to say it's just the cost of hosting etc being covered.