The new world of apps

I won't define the word apps.  The definition is still in flux. It is generally a software application that runs on any computer platform.  But the most common meaning in early 2010 is the term associated with the 100,000 apps that run on an Iphone and are available on Itunes.

I've talked to people in the business and they have a sense that apps are extremely important in our common future.

Let me go further: apps are changing everything in commerce, including brick and mortar retail stores.

I think of an app as an update of a product.  Any product that currently uses electricity or batteries will accommodate apps.

Most of the consumer and much of the commercial market is made up of product updates and will accommodate apps. 

Think of a refrigerator as an example.  With a refrigerator designed to take new apps, you could plug in sensors that would tell you when you left a refrigerator door open, when items inside were too old or past their 'use by' date, when you were taking out more calories than you had previously planned, what you might want to buy as replacement food items, and when you are gaining or loosing weight.  These plus 10,000 other more imaginative food, eating and storage related refrigerator activities would come as apps.

We will rarely buy a new model refrigerator, just buy new apps.

For brick and mortar stores that only leaves a few surviving categories of store: clothing, fashion related, hardware stores, restaurants and a  range of stores where you need to touch and feel products.

I expect this movement from new product models to product app platforms, to be rapid... like a hundred such categories of products in two years.