What’s the iPhone’s ticket to success? 320x480

Despite recent events highlighting that much of the iPhone App Store is indeed just so much spam, there is still a massive, massive influx of apps written for the platform. Why the disparity between the number of apps for the iPhone and, say, Windows Mobile?

Theory: It’s all about 320x480.

A lot of designers and engineers work best under a fixed set of constraints: give them a well-defined problem, and they’ll crank out a solution in no time.

It’s the same with mobile application development. Remember the Palm Pilot, with it’s 160x160 display and fixed button layout? Hoo, boy, they wrote 32,363 apps for that puppy. But then along came the Palm Zire with its wonky key layout, and the Sony Clié PEG-NX70V (PS: Dude, I had one of these!) with its 320x480 pixel display (yes, same as the iPhone, and eight years prior), and suddenly the platform was no longer neatly constrained. And that marked the beginning of the end.

This theory also explains what’s going on with Windows Mobile. You’ve got several dozen hardware and display form factors, some touchable and some not, and a handful of OS versions as well. Nice and neatly constrained platform? Nuh-uh.

But then along comes the iPhone, with several bazillion sold (less, of course, than the several gobzillion Blackberry phones), and an App Store full of really, really novel stuff (and a bunch of crap). What’s driving the interest among developers, especially the low-budget indies?

I’m voting for the constraints: 320x480.