“Think of Apple as the Singapore of the technology world. It is impeccably clean, very functional, supportive of capitalism — and ruthless with miscreants.” – NYTIMES, Bits Blogs Article

“He (Steve Jobs) talked about bans on pornography and malicious programs. He also said Apple will not allow any application to be installed on the machine other than through the iTunes store.”

This is largely a post that will take a jibe at Singapore. We take it that the Singapore brand of being impeccably clean, capitalistic and ruthless with miscreants is now recognized by The NY Times as synonymous with Apple. It definitely sounds like it with the way Steve Jobs is controlling the iPhone distribution process. Instead of going the laissez faire way, he has chosen to control what kind of apps get onto the iPhone platform. Sounds exactly like the Singapore platform huh?

It is a move that clearly demonstrates the power of the Apple brand and the iPhone market takeup. Without having to resort to a free for all and by focusing on quality of apps, Apple seems to be aiming to make a difference in the ecosystem by curating the flow of apps and establishing iTunes as the distribution platform. Well, we have no qualms about that because surely, there must be a price to pay to be associated with the Apple brand.

However, at 30%, (iTunes will take a cut of 30% of each app sold) it does seem a bit steep considering the other pre-eminent mobile platform NTT’s iMode only takes 15%. Hopefully, Apple will consider lowering the cut as volume increases as it will surely encourage more developers to come on-board.

So why will Singaporeans do well in creating iPhone Apps? Well, the joke is that Singaporeans are such conformists: we follow all the rules made up by the government. No pornography, no politically motivated content, nothing malicious…

Naturally, as Singaporeans we will be accustomed to following all the rules of AppleLand! So yeah, building iPhone Apps, following iPhone Rules, easy lah! No problem man!

See Also: http://tomorrow.sg/trackback/url/8154