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Another clue that the iPhone changed the smartphone world is the prevalance and importance given to application stores for each platform. Smartphones have had user built apps forever, Treos coasted for years on the breadth and depth of their third party applications – but no one ever had an integrated application buying environment. That, though, is critical for mainstream success – consumers are all about convenience and ease of use which Apple completely understands. The App Store was a brilliant move and everyone sees that.

The Official Stores Announced

Android, no surprise, will have the Android Market a more free-wheeling environment without the strict control that Apple has placed on its version. It isn’t clear to me who will be running the store, but I’d guess that the carriers would like at least some say (or at least some money) in it. I’d guess Google probably runs it – they need some of that sweet, sweet app money. But Google needs it’s OHA friends to also be ok, so who knows what’ll happen.

What I found surprising, although I shouldn’t have in retrospect, is that RIM is launching its BlackBerry Application Center. (Wow is that a not exciting name. Come on, isn’t there marketing in Canada?) Their forthcoming Storm will be their first phone to have access to it. The BBAC will be carrier hosted (and thus specific) so they’ll have control over what goes into the store and they’ll see who is downloading what. This is a huge disappointment – it still shows the crazy strength that the carriers wield over handset makers. Also, it shows its band-aidy nature by not having a built in download and install process – instead requiring switching over to the browser for that.

So three platforms now and three stores. But wait, what? Three platforms and six stores? That’s right! Thanks to the wonders of competition and ingenuity, each of these platforms already has competition from unexpected corners.

The Unofficial Competition

Most surprising, to me, was Apptism.com a competitor to the App Store. On one level it is a great web interface to all the apps in the App Store with the ability to rate, comment and sort the apps. More importantly, though, it could provide an alternate means to sell non-jailbroken apps that stay outside of Apple’s control. Apple does see fit to crush any opposition to it’s dominance, so I’m not sure how well that will work out, but it was surprising to see this store show up at all. I’m routing for it!

Android is the most obvious platform to have alternate stores. It would have been nice to have seen the actual MarketPlace open sourced so new MarketPlaces could open or the app customized to provide different interfaces into the existing one. Nevertheless, Handango is set to open it’s own market – the key difference is that it will launch with paid apps. Not only that, they’ll support one-off, monthly and annual billing options for the applications, which seems to me like a real innovation. I wonder how that will integrate into the actual apps so that they can know if they’ve been paid for properly. This will also seem to tie the apps to the Handango store, since it doesn’t seem overly likely that the official MarketPlace will support that.

Finally even RIM, which just announced it BBAC already finds itself facing the BerryStore. (that is a way, way better name, too. I’m just sayin.). This store, by review, seems to already have the better applications of the two! Even better is that it supports older handsets too, so everyone will be able to use the store. Rejoice! RIM’s got to be happy about that, even if the carriers aren’t.

It is clear that where the new breed of smartphones was initially about the browser experience, everyone’s thrown in the towel and conceded that Mobile Safari won and all will try to emulate that. The new proving ground is application distribution and that’s being hotly contested, Apple sits on the throne now (not least of all because they’re the only one’s out, yet), but with Android’s openness in such contrast to Apple’s closed-ness and RIM’s huge userbase, we’ll see how long that will last.

This competition for each of the platforms, though, is a great sign. Personally, I have the most hope for Android’s – given it’s openness, it doesn’t seem that there’s anything that could be done to close down Handango’s efforts. By contrast there is lots that Apple can and probably will do should a credible alternate show up. For Blackberries, wit tighter carrier control over the handsets – I’m not sure exactly how much control they have – but I’d guess they’ll at least try to do something to prevent any competition arising. Still, it is very interesting to see the sheer amount of activity on this front and it looks to me like consumers are really benefitting from it all with a plethora of choice. What do you think?