{"id":783,"date":"2009-06-10T00:13:04","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T00:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/?p=783"},"modified":"2009-06-10T00:13:04","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T00:13:04","slug":"platform-vendors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/2009\/06\/10\/platform-vendors\/","title":{"rendered":"Platform vendors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Winer<\/a> (in 2007): \u201cSometimes developers choose a niche that\u2019s either directly in the path of the vendor, or even worse, on the roadmap of the vendor. In those cases, they don\u2019t really deserve our sympathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

iSmashPhone: 15 Apps Rendered Obsolete By The New iPhone 3GS<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>When independent software developers create utilities, add-ons, or applications that fill a hole in their platform vendor\u2019s offering, they like to think that they\u2019re doing the vendor a huge favor. Oh, look, the iPhone doesn\u2019t have cut and paste,  they say. Business opportunity! They might imagine that this business will be around forever. Some of them even like to daydream about the platform vendor buying them up. Payday!<\/p>\n

The trouble is that only a tiny percentage of iPhone users are going to pay for that little cut and paste application. With any kind of add-on, selling to 1% of the platform is a huge success.<\/p>\n

For Apple, that\u2019s a problem. That means that the cut and paste problem isn\u2019t<\/em> solved for 99% of their customers. They will<\/em> solve it, if it\u2019s really a problem. And you\u2019ll be out of business.<\/p>\n

Filling little gaps in another company\u2019s product lineup is snatching nickels from the path of an oncoming steam roller.<\/p>\n

A good platform always has opportunities for applications that aren\u2019t just gap-fillers. These are the kind of application that the vendor is unlikely ever to consider a core feature, usually because it\u2019s vertical \u2014 <\/em>it\u2019s not something everyone is going to want. There is exactly zero chance that Apple is ever going to add a feature to the iPhone for dentists. Zero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Winer (in 2007): \u201cSometimes developers choose a niche that\u2019s either directly in the path of the vendor, or even worse, on the roadmap of the vendor.… Read more “Platform vendors”<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p83KNI-cD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}