News Regarding the Center
Play Flute, Name a Tune (or Make a Call)
New York Times
January 02, 2009
The popularity of applications for the iPhone is driving a fierce competition among Apple and the makers of the BlackBerry and Palm devices. Since July, Apple has posted more than 10,000 programs like these at its App Store. The new status symbol is what your phone can do -- count calories, teach Spanish, simulate a flute, or fling a monkey from a tree.
With the advent of touch-screen technology and faster wireless networks, the new competition and cool factor revolves around thousands of fun,
quirky (and even useful) programs that run on the phones.
The popularity of such applications for Apple's iPhone, the leader of the transformation, is driving a fierce competition among the makers of
the BlackBerry and Palm devices, and even Google and Microsoft.
It heralds a new era in the allure of a mobile device -- the phone is no longer a fashion statement but a digital bag of tricks.
"Just having the iPhone a year ago was special, but now you have to exceed that," said James Katz, executive director of the Center for
Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers. "The apps are a wonderful, wild and woolly world of interpersonal bragging rights."
"It's status for the rest of us," he said.
|
