Gauravonomics TV Episode 8: Only If My Nokia E71 Had an App Ecosystem

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Many of you may know that I record and upload my vidcasts exclusively from my Nokia E71 smartphone. I also use my E71 almost exclusively for reading my e-mail and 150 feeds, and accessing the only four social networks I am really active on — YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. If you add to that my compulsive calendering and my total reliance on GPS even to navigate two blocks, you can imagine how big a role my E71 is playing in my life right now. In fact, I would say that the E71 has been my main computer for the last two weeks. For the most part, it has been great and I totally love it.

However, a phone is as good as the app ecosystem around it and there is no app ecosystem around the Nokia E71. It comes with half a dozen pre-installed apps and apart from the mainstream web services like GMail/ GoogleReader/ GoogleMaps/ YouTube/ Yahoo/ Flickr/ Twitter/ Facebook, pretty much nothing else works on it. As much as I love the E71, I can’t see it getting traction against the iPhone unless Nokia gets developers to write apps for it.

Increasingly, that’s true not only for mobile phones, but also for almost all digital product or service offerings. By building an app ecosystem, a company can focus on its core offereing and allow partners to use its API to build layers of functionality on top of it. Facebook, Twitter and iPhone are all great examples of this thinking.

While most companies are beginning to acknowledge the importance of a robust app ecosystem, many have found it difficult to build one. The question, then, is — why are some companies better than others at partnering with developers for building an app ecosystem?

Also See: What can we learn about the iPhone app ecosystem from the Facebook app ecosystem? by Fred Wilson, Facebook’s Booming App Ecosystem by Mark Evans, O’Reilly Radar Report–The Facebook Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive–and Most Don’t, The application ecosystem: ten lessons learned by Henry Morris.

If you liked this post, you should check out some other posts like this:

• I Love My New Nokia E71
• Master List of Social Gaming and Game Mechanics Platforms
• Now and Forever: Timelessness in a Real-Time World
• How to Create a Talkworthy Experience Ecosystem: The Social CRM Toolkit
• Guest Post: How are Human Resource Professionals Using Social Media?
• Updated: How Internet and Mobile Technologies are Transforming Election Campaigning in India