Comparing Apples and Androids

What shouldn't be overlooked with the launch of Apple's new 3G iPhone tomorrow (here's everything you need to know about that) is today's launch of its iPhone application store--that's where the real story is, says BBC News' Rory Cellan-Jones. It's a stellar market test of the open vs. closed approaches the major phone players are taking toward mobile phone applications.

While the Apple store, the first real mass-market attempt to sell mobile users on the idea of downloaded software, is now open, it's really anything but "open," Cellan-Jones says. Like most things Apple, the watchword with the new store is control, especially over the third-party applications allowed in. As he writes:

"Apple controls access to the Apps Store and to the iPhone. "It's very locked-down" one small developer told me, contrasting Apple's approach to Google's upcoming Android platform and even to Windows Mobile.

Joe Richards has been trying to get his security application iRedhanded (it sends out annoying noises to anyone who steals your phone and wipes personal data) onto the applications store. He says big firms have been welcomed in - but for smaller players like him "it's like waiting outside a nightclub with the bouncer promising you'll be let in sooner or later."

Contrast that with Google's more open posture with Android, and the game is on. What happens to the nascent market when Google (or even Microsoft) decide to open up their own applications store, but let everyone in?