Lab Soft News: iPhones, Physicians, and the Dilemma of the "Walled Garden"

App phones (see: Does the Smartphone/App Phone Provide More Functionality Than the PC?), also commonly referred to as smart phones, have rapidly become a critical tool for professionals of various types but particularly for physicians. Think of the devices as mobile computers. Then combine this concept with the increasing accessibility of on-line medical records as well as the complete medical literature and medical textbooks. Newer cell phones can support video conferencing, enabling on-line visits with patients from anywhere in the world. The cell phone was quickly adopted by most physicians and the next-gen app phone will enjoy even greater success.

Most people will concede that the iPhone was the first and best app phone. However, Apple has established a significant barrier to new app availability on the device because of its walled-garden policy. This term is defined in the Wikepedia in the following way:

A walled garden, is an analogy used in the telecommunications and media industries when referring to carrier or service provider control over applications and content/media on platforms (such as mobile devices) and restricting convenient access to non-approved applications or content.

I don't believe that Steve Jobs will ever give up his "walled garden" policy for the iPhone. I also believe that an open-source approach to app development will yield a much richer mix of programs, some of them very specialized, that will serve physicians very well in the future. Industry experts are beginning to question Apple's approach and whether it can endure in today red-hot app phone market (see: Can Apple's iPhone 'Walled Garden' Continue to Thrive?), Here is an excerpt from this article:

But in his BusinessWeek interview, [Apple senior executive Phil] Schiller does not say how Apple might go further to give developers more advance notice about potential blockades to application approval....Apple still has the power to wield this kind of control due to the commanding lead it holds over other mobile platforms in terms of numbers of applications in its online store. But as other mobile phone environments begin to catch up to the iPhone, will Apple still be able to maintain a "walled garden" for mobile phone users, reminiscent of AOL's approach to the Internet in years gone by? That scenario is looking increasingly unlikely.

Google with its Android operating system, and the growing number of mobile phones with this OS, enthusiastically supports an open-source approach to app development. I believe that this the most creative and productive path to software development. But the story even gets better. Google has just released a product that greatly simplifies app development for all Android phones (see: App Inventor for Android). Here's a passage from this article about App Inventor:

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. You can...make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone. But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate....with Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud. To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app's behavior.

The market for iPhone will continue to be build. However, and in parallel, I predict that the Android phones will gain market share. Ultimately, these devices will dominate the professional market segment, including physicians, because of their long-term greater functionality, a situation analogous to the experience of Macs in the PC market. And for the same reasons.