Why the real iPhone-killer could be an app store – not a handset

I’ve just written a post on Getjar, the cross-platform open-source app store. It’s the freewheeling bad little brother of Apple’s app store and currently only has 650 million app downloads to Apple’s 2 billion. But because Getjar is open source where Apple is both censored and sandboxed, it has much more potential for growth. Getjar could really hit the iPhone where it hurts – in its app store.

While every other new Blackberry/Palm/Nokia gets touted as an iPhone-killer, this open-source app store could actually have a much more significant impact on Apple’s little darling. Though the hardware specs on the iPhone have improved with the 3GS, a lot of iPhone-users get the iPhone for the software not the hardware: the app store not the so-so camera is what you’re paying £50 a month for.

Apple knows it and that’s why their ad campaigns tout the app store with its 1 billion apps as the big advantage of the iPhone. Well that asset could soon be neutralised by Getjar if its free app store does take off as they predict.

They claim their new platform is good for developers and good for consumers and that the site can only get bigger.

If you’re no longer buying into a fixed app store when you buy a smartphone you might as well buy the phone for the hardware and then customise it with any software you fancy downloaded from some open-source app store like Getjar. As long as you’re getting internet access from somewhere you can then download any apps that fit your phone.

See the key features of Getjar here: 5 reasons why Getjar could become the biggest mobile app store in the world