Two Ways to Develop Apps...

...and neither is completely right. Mobile operators, no less than their wireline brethren, have to figure out now just what applications are hot, and how to build business models around them, but how to balance the walled garden with the over the top open approach to apps.

It's an old argument spun in new ways. Service providers traditionally have created the apps on behalf of end users, with modest success in some cases. The Internet, of course, changes everything. Now end users and third parties can develop as they like, without carrier permission. Neither the walled garden or the completely open approaches will completely exclude the other sort of approach, though.

Gatekeepers will still have a role in guaranteeing better user experience for some third party apps, as well as developing a few of their own apps. Most apps, though, are simply going to be delivered over the top. The real pinch points are going to come where the app involves real time services with high bandwidth requirements. In those cases, carriers often will emerge as providers of latency control and app context features.

As analysts at The Yankee Group see matters, Internet types will prefer flat rate pricing while service providers lean towards usage-based models. There is room for both, plus ad support. Hybrid models are the future.