It’s about time that desktops joined the party. This is a huge boon for software nerds of all types, and has resulted in the explosion of mobile apps and services in the past two years. This is imperfect, of course, but focusing on building a great product is the best strategy for succeeding on an app store. Once an app store takes hold, the software market on a platform starts moving towards a meritocracy. To succeed on such a platform, the developer has to spend as much time and money on channels, logistics, partnerships and advertising as on actually making a great product.

Until a week ago, all the good app stores just happened to be on mobile devices, but someone with a shiny new Macbook is just as eager to get the best apps as someone with a shiny new iPhone.Ī platform without a well-formed app store presents a huge challenge to developers. It isn’t mobile that’s overwhelmingly important, it’s the app store. Last week made us realize that the reality is a little bit more nuanced. This led us to the understandable conclusion that mobile was the crucial thing that made a platform attractive to independent developers. Over the past year, about 70% of Evernote’s new users came from mobile app stores, mostly iOS and Android. The following twenty or thirty years brought us monopolies and barriers to entry and this happy state of affairs became a dim memory. You just had to make something great and the rest would follow. and C) Rarely, I prefer to write my own.” The fact that C was a viable choice pretty much sums up the early euphoria of the consumer software industry. “Do you buy software for your computer?”, was the first question. It had a little survey aimed at my fellow nerds. I remember one of the first computer articles that I ever read (maybe it was in Byte Magazine in the early 80s while I was in junior high). We just finished our first week on the Mac App Store and it might have been the most important week in Evernote’s history.

It also didn’t hurt that the app has been prominently featured by Apple. Editor’s note: The following guest post is written by Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, which is currently the No.

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