Apple's iPhone App Store is 'closing the mobile web'

Although the iPhone App Store has been a huge success, Apple's control of the applications has created lots of controversy

There seems to be a never-ending stream of suppliers upset about the way Apple controls their applications, or refuses to add them to its iPhone App Store. The latest is Free Press, which "alleges that Apple crippled SlingPlayer, a TV-streaming application for iPhone, so that it would only work on a Wi-Fi connection," according to Wired. However, Apple has approved live streaming for a Major League Baseball app.

"That strikes us as odd and potentially nefarious because it really represents a carrier picking and choosing applications for consumers as opposed to letting consumers decide which videos they want to watch," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. "It's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect in an internet experience that's controlled by the carrier."

According to AT&T, the problem is that it doesn't have enough network capacity. Wired reports:

"We're certainly not crippling any apps," an AT&T spokesman said. "This is an issue of fairness…. While we would like to support all video services across our network, the reality is that wireless networks simply lack the capacity to support customers streaming hours of cable, satellite or IPTV video programming to individual users."

When the network is overloaded, some iPhone users can't get a 3G signal, and some can't make phone calls at all. Obviously this is not a desirable feature if you're selling a device as a mobile phone.

And when carriers can charge 15p or more for sending a short SMS text message, any app that enables free TV streaming looks like a financial disaster. If users had to pay a proportionate cost, relatively few of them would do it -- especially since over-the-air broadcast TV is essentially free..

But this isn't just a problem for mobile network carriers. Broadband ISP's also tend to imply that users can do things that their networks can't support, hence the usage limits and "fair use" policies.

Of course, none of this really justifies Apple's tight but idiosyncratic control over what apps are offered. Nokia (Symbian) and Windows Mobile users, for example, have been able to download and install whatever they like from the thousands of apps available from third party stores such as Handango, without the world coming to an end. This was true long before Apple launched the iPhone.

However, it might help if Apple made it absolutely clear that users and app suppliers were buying into a tightly controlled system, not a free and open one. I don't expect it would put many people off, and the rest would have no basis for complaint.