Yep, it’s simply one big iPod/iPhone with a bad accent.

I preach the economics of technology. Simply put I am mostly ridiculed for that theory by anybody who’s glimpsed at economics and doesn’t know much about technology. On the other hand it turns out that everybody I’ve talked to who does keep a close eye on the tech industry agrees almost instantly that yes, the success of products in the technology market are due to developer interest, and only developer interest in the long-run. Now I remain a firm believer of this myself and have been trying to find exceptions to this rule. One that was suggested was the Apple iPod, which as we all know was a runaway success. However seeing that lately the traditional iPods have started to phase out in favour of iPod Touches (where all the developer interest is) this example simply reaffirms my theory. The other fine suggestion was an interesting one, too – computer games. These, I believe, have a much longer period until developer interest deals the final blow – and in some cases are completely consumer-determined. These are an anomaly. I challenge people to find others.

But but but – for the rest the theory will apply. So why don’t we look at the iPad from the perspective of a producer-determined success?

If anything, Apple hit the jackpot. It’s not a secret that developers have been looking forward until the time we had a sensible tablet platform to work wonders on. When Apple decided to allow iPhone apps to run on it natively unchanged, not only does this mean that developers don’t need to bother about learning a brand new system (simplifying things a bit here), it also means that porting over applications are quick and easy. 140,000 applications immediately available to a consumer? I’ll take that, thank you very much.

I’m not too knowledgable about Apple products but I do know that iPhones can be “jailbroken” – a way of breaking your deal with Apple to enjoy a bit more freedom. If this iPad can be jailbroken to run third-party applications that don’t have the Jobs seal of approval and bypass other random restrictions I’m sure will exist, that’ll blow developer interest sky-high.

One thing many people seem to confuse developer interest with is that they think the degree of developer freedom is proportional to the interest received. No, this is not true. Developer interest arises and shifts prone to as many factors and more as consumers. If a developer thinks consumers will like it, regardless if they do or don’t, they will devote time to the product. So despite the face analysis that the iPad has 140,000 developers already upfront (on the assumption that there is on average 1 developer per app) we can’t ignore the other main factors.

In the beginning I mentioned that developers have been looking forward until we had a sensible tablet platform – so when I say other main factors, this is the one I’m talking about. Once they get over the fact that it’s quite simply a fat iPod Touch looks-wise, we’ll have to question whether or not the time is ripe for a tablet platform to come or if this is just going to be classed as another failed attempt to make a tablet successful and the “perfect” tablet is yet to come. What determines how other developers see this is how well Apple has upgraded the in-house apps to take advantage of the bigger screen.

Well folks, as you can see even though we’ve not once considered the consumer’s point of view it doesn’t get us much closer to guessing how successful it’ll be. No – the economics of technology should not be shunned to a corner and disrespected but instead embraced as a new way to look at success in technology.

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