iPhone apps outselling US market
September 5th 2008
mocoNews (via Distorted Loop) is running an interview with Matt Murphy, manager of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers' (KPCB) iFund, a $100-million funding source for iPhone / touch developers. Though they've only cut checks to only five developers, KPCB has generated a large amount of light and noise.
The interview isn't about sizzling new apps or fresh initiatives from KPBC. However, as you would expect from a person of Murphy's pay grade, he does have some interesting things to say.
Yes, he does repeat some boiler plate pap about Apple's "cult following" and, rather chillingly, he believes mobile app developers are emphasizing the advertising-based and software-as-service (ie pay forever) models.
The money quote, however, is about the space Apple's cut out for itself with the iPhone and AppStore:
The iPhone is the place to be. One of the statistics we've been looking at is the figure Steve Jobs quoted of there being 60 million downloads in the first 30 days. If you strip out ringtones and wallpaper sales for all the US carriers combined, that's more downloads than they have in an entire quarter. That means 10 million iPhone users are outselling the entire US market of 250 million mobile devices.
In just over a year, Apple has completely redefined the smartphone market and, for all intents and purposes, established the mobile software market.
Amazing, simply amazing...
What's your take?
