![]() We’ll never know whether Jobs was wrong but the app store was a masterstroke for Apple that not only disrupted the entire mobile industry, it also breathed new life into the iPod Touch and eventually, the iPad and the Mac. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs was against opening out an app store to third party developers. But when the iPhone launched without the app store, it still had a basic set of in-house-developed apps which gave it the minimum functionality required from a high-end phone at that time. In fact, the whole implementation of the iPhone+App Store as a platform showed up several months down the line. When the iPhone launched back in 2007, it didn’t have an app store. The products on the platform (rental listings, videos and apps respectively) are the ultimate products with which the consumers interact. Consumers visit AirBnB to rent apartments, Youtube to watch videos and get onto the iTunes app store to download apps. The problem is that platforms have little or no standalone value to consumers. Platforms face The Ghost Town Problem quite often, not just on day one but all the way till they hit critical mass. You’d have a choice between a merchant and consumer profile and once you set up your profile, you’d realize really soon that the platform was utterly useless if there weren’t any sellers selling their wares.
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