微软从苹果那里学到了错误的教训

In its first month, Apple’s App Store, which sells applications for its iPhone and iPod Touch devices, raked in $30 million, and is on track to do over $300 million in sales by year’s end. Investment firm Piper Jaffray thinks that in 2009, App Store revenues could top $1.2 billion, which would make it a major source of revenue for Apple.

在苹果销售iPhone和iPod Touch设备应用程序的第一个月，苹果公司的App Store 收入就达到了3000万美元 ，并且有望在年底前实现超过3亿美元的销售额。 投资公司Piper Jaffray认为，2009年，App Store的收入可能超过12亿美元 ，这将使其成为Apple的主要收入来源。

From Microsoft’s perspective, that all must look pretty tantalizing. Their more mature Windows Mobile platform has about 18,000 applications compared to just 2,000 for Apple’s. Unlike Apple, though, Microsoft doesn’t control the distribution of apps on its platform — virtually anyone can set up a marketplace and sell Windows Mobile applications, and many people have. So Microsoft is theoretically missing out on a ton of potential revenue by not being a central clearinghouse for apps on its mobile platform.

从微软的角度来看，所有这些看起来都非常诱人。 他们更成熟的Windows Mobile平台拥有约18,000个应用程序，而苹果公司只有2,000个。 但是，与Apple不同，Microsoft不能控制其平台上应用程序的分发-几乎任何人都可以建立市场并销售Windows Mobile应用程序，很多人都可以。 因此，从理论上讲，Microsoft并不是移动平台上应用程序的中央票据交换所，因此大量地浪费了潜在的收入。

For now.

目前。

There was news yesterday of Skymarket, which is apparently the name of Microsoft’s planned application marketplace for mobile apps on its forthcoming Windows Mobile 7 platform. According to a Microsoft job posting, the company is aiming for Skymarket to be “‘the place to be’ for developers wishing to distribute and monetize their Windows Mobile applications.” Google announced an app market for their phone operating system, Android, last week.

昨天有Skymarket的消息 ，这显然是微软计划在即将面世的Windows Mobile 7平台上针对移动应用程序计划的应用程序市场的名称。 根据微软的一份职位公告，该公司的目标是使Skymarket成为希望分发Windows Mobile应用程序并从中获利的开发人员的“理想之所”。 谷歌上周宣布了其手机操作系统Android 的应用市场 。

On the surface, this seems like a good lesson for Microsoft to learn from Apple: controlling the distribution for applications means a ton of potential revenue. But is it bad for consumers?

从表面上看，这似乎是微软向苹果学习的好课：控制应用程序的分发意味着大量的潜在收入。 但这对消费者不利吗？

That really depends on how much like Apple Microsoft wants to be. As we discussed last month, closed platforms are bad for the web. They provide added security for users, and additional revenue streams for platform providers, but they also foster “tension between application developers and platform owners, and [potentially give] users the feeling that they don’t actually own the applications they’re using.”

这真的取决于苹果微软想要成为什么样的人。 正如我们上个月讨论的那样， 封闭平台对网络不利 。 它们为用户提供了额外的安全性，并为平台提供商提供了更多的收入来源，但同时也加剧了“应用程序开发人员与平台所有者之间的紧张关系，[潜在地]使用户感到他们实际上并不拥有所使用的应用程序。 ”

The Guardian’s Jack Schofield thinks that it is unlikely that Microsoft can afford to be as closed as Apple is with their application platform, because as soon as they try that, existing application sellers will cry foul (and Microsoft has a history of trouble when people start calling them a monopoly). That’s probably true, and Microsoft seems likely to also tie Windows Mobile 7 into its Live Mesh platform (our coverage), which by most accounts is proving that Microsoft knows how to be open.

《卫报》的杰克·斯科菲尔德(Jack Schofield)认为， 微软不太可能像苹果在其应用程序平台上那样封闭 ，因为一旦他们尝试这样做，现有的应用程序销售商就会大喊大叫(而当人们开始时，微软就有麻烦的历史。称他们为垄断者)。 这可能是对的，微软似乎也可能将Windows Mobile 7与其Live Mesh平台结合起来 ( 我们的报道 )，大多数人都证明了微软知道如何开放 。

On the other hand, suggesting that Skymarket is solely a clone of Apple’s app store is disingenuous. Microsoft has plenty of experience with controlled, closed platform application marketplaces. The Xbox Live Marketplace has been available for nearly 3 years (and since 2004 as the Live Arcade). That marketplace is a Microsoft controlled application store (that sells games in this case) similar to Apple’s App Store.

另一方面，暗示Skymarket仅仅是苹果应用商店的一个克隆是不明智的。 Microsoft在受控的封闭平台应用程序市场上拥有丰富的经验。 Xbox Live市场已经使用了将近3年(从2004年开始为Live Arcade)。 该市场是由Microsoft控制的应用程序商店(在这种情况下销售游戏)，类似于Apple的App Store。

For their part, Google has indicated that their Android marketplace will be wide open. “We chose the term ‘market’ rather than ‘store’ because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available,” said Google Eric Chu to CNET last week. Chu compared the process of uploading apps to the Android market to uploading videos to YouTube, indicating that any control Google will exercise over the marketplace will be passive, after-the-fact-style moderation.

Google表示，他们的Android市场将是开放的。 Google Eric Chu上周向CNET表示：“我们选择术语“市场”而不是“商店”，是因为我们认为开发人员应该具有开放而不受阻碍的环境来提供其内容。 Chu将上传应用程序到Android市场的过程与将视频上传到YouTube的过程进行了比较，这表明Google对市场实行的任何控制都是事后虚假的，适度的。

翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/microsoft-learns-the-wrong-lesson-from-apple/