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February 15, 2009
The iPhone and the App Store contradictions

Marta Kagan recently put online a useful presentation on branded applications for the iPhone, considered as the next generation of immersive mobile branding. Her slideshow gives me the opportunity to spend a couple of words on the huge contradictions I see on App Store if you take the digital marketer point of view.

View more presentations from Marta Kagan. (tags: iphone marketing)

We are talking so much about the digital world, where everything and everybody is connected, where you can discover and get to know great ideas and great people from all around the world, global meets local etc, etc, etc... But, but, but the Apple App Store is far from being a global store. If you are based in Italy for example, very often you can't buy nor even download for the applications developed in the US, and viceversa.

As you know, there is a different store for each single country. This differentiation makes perfect sense if you are looking at music or movies because of all the implications of rights management, but to me it becomes a strong and kind of silly limit if you think about applications, and branded applications in particular. Unless you have a credit card issued in the country where you want to purchase the digital good there is no way to download the software. And this becomes even more silly if we are talking about a free application.

I know that the developer can decide whether he wants to launch a new applications only in his country, or if he wants to launch it on a global scale. However I wonder if all marketers working on developing branded applications are aware/informed of this possibility.

As a curious marketer, as a blogger and even as a consumer I would be very interested in trying out (for example) the applications by GAP and Kraft but this is simply not feasible.

The bottom line of this whiny post is: Is anybody aware of a trick to be able to download applications from other countries stores???

Comments on this entry

Pointed out that .... I got the trick you are looking for (but it's better to talk about this in mail :) ) I can't see the contradictions you are talking about.

Considering that everything we deal with in the digital environment can be defined as a platform, then we have to understand if we are looking at a CLOSED or OPEN platform and then evaluate pros and cons.

Being an open platform allows you to use the power of network collaborations and so on (ie the open source software), while you might prefer a closed platform if you are looking for a more stable and reliable experience (the apple platform with itunes/iphone/etc).

I don't believe that one size fits all in this case .. it just depends on what you are looking for :)

Posted by: Giuseppe Mayer at February 16, 2009 02:07 PM

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Hello Martina,
You damn right,
it's funny I just faced the same situation today, while wanting to download the Kraft one ! ...
and just came up to the same conclusion, or should I say question.

Posted by: Laurent at February 16, 2009 03:17 PM

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Luckily one can download the Italian "Nike Goal" !
;-)

Posted by: Laurent at February 16, 2009 03:20 PM

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I can see that this only encourages more torrents and P2P

Posted by: CC at February 17, 2009 05:22 AM

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