Apple Inc.’s iPhone-App Store combo was possibly the biggest disruption in the smart phone market, well, ever. That formula revolutionized the way mobile phone applications are built, bought, distributed and used, and other smart phone makers, caught flat-footed, scurried to replicate the model.
The four online app markets available in Canada — Apple’s App Store, Research in Motion Ltd.’s App World, Microsoft Corp.’s soon-to-be-launched Windows Mobile Marketplace and Google Inc.’s Android Market — are home to almost 85,000 applications, with 65,000 (and rising) in Apple’s catalogue alone.
We sampled a few so we could tell you what’s a time-saver, what’s a time-waster and what’s just a waste of time.