游戏邦注：本文原作者为Chomp首席执行官及创始人Ben Keighran，Chomp是一款移动应用搜索引擎。

1996年是互联网发展史具有标志性意义的一年。那时网景公司（Netscape）已经成立了两年，Excite@home即将用快到难以想象的兆位连接所有的家庭网络，Webvan正打算把农场的新鲜果蔬送入千家万户（免费运送），Flooz则打算淘汰钱包及现金支付方式，各种破土而出的创新思维让1996年成了互联网发展的光明时期。

当这些变革发生时我还在上小学，我期待着有一天可以参与到这种变化之中。我一直梦想用创新的技术改变世界，在我看来，1996年是最富有创新性的思维大爆炸的时代，它以改变生活的方式，将最具创新性的思想呈现在了公众眼前。

多数人说起互联网的繁荣与萧条时，他们一般是指在这个淘金过程中的得失，创造新科技、改变世界却并非他们关注的重点。在我看来，金钱很有吸引力，但人们真正应该重视的是，新技术被采用的概率、新公司获取市场份额的速度、新技术和新企业取代上一代最热门产品时产生的行业格局变化等问题。

依我之见，人们应该关注的核心问题是“移动应用程序及支持它们的技术，会改变人们因1996年的互联网变革所形成的交流方式、获取信息的途径和手段吗？”我个人认为答案是肯定的。互联网的繁荣并非一个独一无二的历史时期，而仅仅是一个引人注目的时期。但假若我们能够在科技发展史中学到点什么，那就是总有更大的变革即将到来。

今时今日，有人也许会问我们是否正置身于另一轮科技泡沫之中。这一点很明显，但如果说我们确实正处于泡沫之中，那也正处于它的膨胀时期，这与90年代末的情况十分相似。但两者之间有一个关键的差别：在90年代，它只与网站有关；这一次，它是关于应用程序及移动网络的变革。

作为专注于解决应用搜索问题的Chomp公司创始人及CEO，我经常通过独特的视角观察世界，我很确信我的观点是正确的。看一看数据吧，即使你不完全认同我的观点，但数据是难以辩驳的事实。很显然，不管是现在的移动设备覆盖率，还是移动应用程序的数量和下载速度都足以让1996年的数据自惭形秽。

当我看到1996年至2000年的对比数据时，我感到十分乐观。我认为我们正在见证一个所谓的“互联网应用程序”（appification of the web）的奇迹，原因见下图：

internet-trends

以上图表来自玛丽·米克尔（Mary Meeker）在去年Web 2.0峰会上的演说，当时她也表示如今的移动互联网正以惊人的速度成长，比网景公司1994年成立时的固定网络的发展还要快8倍。

移动应用的相关统计数据更令人惊讶。截止2009年，仅iTunes的应用下载量就达到了30亿次，但仅仅一年以后，即2010年它的应用下载量已高达82亿次。

自从苹果公司在2008年发布App Store以来，该应用商店的下载量已经超过100亿次。在2010年末，Pew Internet公布了一份题为《应用程序文化崛起》（Rise of the Apps Culture）的报告。对我来说，这份报告最有价值的信息之一就是：35%的美国成年用户的手机中装有应用程序。

另一份名为《审视全球应用程序市场》（Sizing up the Global Apps Market）的研究报告的统计数据同样令人印象深刻。在2008年，全球应用商店数量尚不足5家，但到2010年2月份便已激增至近50家。最近刚刚成立的AppBistro公司，也宣布将帮助发行商创建自定义的应用商店，由此可预见，应用商店在不久的将来还会大量涌现。

再进一步观察，就会发现这些数据已从乐观转变为惊人了（游戏邦注：据扬基集团预测，到2013年全美智能手机应用程序下载量将近70亿次，有可能创收42亿美元；Gartner公司预计2011年移动应用下载量将高达177亿

次，比去年统计的82亿次下载量增长117%）。根据Gartner 公司的报告显示，去年手机应用商店的总营收为52亿美元，预计2011年将达到151亿美元，增长190%。除此之外，Kleiner Perkins的Mary Meeker也曾经预测，在未来的五年内全球移动数据流量将增长26倍。

打破行业格局的新兴企业

正如90年代新兴网络技术成功地打破了旧的行业秩序一样，如今移动应用同样成就了一大批卓越的企业。

● Instagram（下载量刚突破200万次）、PicPlz、Path有可能成为新一代的flickr。

●Foursquare和Gowalla着眼于移动用户，创建出了一种全新形式的社交网络。

●Square让用户通过手机处理信用卡交易，与PayPal在90年代末的表现一样，再次改变了用户的个人交易方式。

●Shazam彻底改变了人们搜索并发现音乐的方法，并让这一过程更为自然和随意，对唱片公司和实体商店产生了进一步的冲击。

●Rovio很有成为下一个游戏巨头公司的潜力。

●从androidify到doggy squeak toys，成千上万款新奇的应用程序取代了人们在十年前相互发送的跳舞小人和飞行面包机。

所有的这些公司及其产品，都将在各自的领域威胁并颠覆现存的经营模式，这是与互联网繁荣时期的网站与网页内容的颠覆性创新如出一辙，只是这次的革命性创新是以移动应用为中心，它将进一步为推动整个行业的科技发展。

那么，如何才能通过这一轮科技浪潮获得发展呢？那就是，向上一代的获胜者取经，找到用需求，通过移动应用为他们提供最新的互联网服务。如果你能为人们提供更出色、更快捷、更贴心的移动体验，就有望跻身“变革者”的行列，创造全新的价值，在重重挑战中胜出。相信这一行中，终会有人创造出下一个Facebook或者新一代Google。总之，旧的行业格局即将被打破，1996年即将重新上演。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

For Mobile Apps, It’s 1996 All Over Again

This guest post is by Ben Keighran, CEO & Co-Founder of Chomp, a search engine for mobile apps.

1996 was a great year in the life of the web. Netscape had launched two years earlier, Excite@home was going to wire all of our homes with unthinkably fast megabit connections, Webvan was going to deliver farm fresh fruits and veggies to everyone’s house (without delivery charges) and Flooz was going to make wallets (as well as the cash they contained) obsolete. In terms of ground breaking innovative thinking, 1996 was a very good year.

For me, I was in primary school when all of this was happening, and I hoped that one day I could be part of something like this. I’ve always dreamed of changing the world with innovative technology and from my perspective 1996 was the time when an explosion of some of the most innovative thinking the world had ever seen became visible to the public in such a life-altering way.

When most people talk about the dot-com boom and bust they talk about the money that was made and lost in the process. What they don’t talk about so much is the innovation that created completely new and world changing technologies. From my perspective the money is interesting but the real conversation needs to be about the rate at which a new technology is adopted, the speed with which new companies are gaining market share and the disruptions that are happening as new technologies and companies supplant the prior generation’s most popular products.

As I see it, the big question people should be asking is, “Will mobile applications and the technologies that support them change the way people communicate, get information and do business to the degree that the web did starting in 1996?” Personally, I say yes. The dot-com boom was not a singular moment in history, just a notable one—but if there’s anything we can learn from the history of tech, it’s that there’s always something bigger on the horizon.

Today people are asking if we’re in another tech bubble. It’s a distinct possibility, but if we are in a bubble, it’s likely the expansion stage of that bubble and what we’re witnessing looks a lot like what we saw in the late 90’s, right down to the Super Bowl commercials. However, there’s one key difference: in the 90’s it was all about web sites; today, it’s all about apps and the mobile web.

Granted, I see the world through a very particular lens as the co-founder and CEO of Chomp, a technology company focused exclusively on solving the app discovery problem. As a result, I’m quite literally invested in my perspective being the right one. That said, take a look at the data; even if you don’t completely buy into my perspective, it’s hard to argue with the figures.It’s pretty clear that the growth of mobile usage and the rate at which mobile apps are being developed and downloaded continues at a rate that puts the 1996 numbers to shame.

When I look at the stats and compare them with what happened between 1996 and 2000 I feel very optimistic, and based upon what I see, I think we’re witnessing a phenomenon that I like to call the “appification of the web”. Here’s why:

The slide above comes from Mary Meeker’s presentation at last year’s Web 2.0 Summit. During the presentation she also commented that right now the mobile Internet is growing at 8x the speed of the fixed Internet when the Netscape browser was launched in 1994.

Stats related to mobile apps are even more astonishing. By the end of 2009 roughly 3 billion mobile apps had been downloaded from iTunes alone. That sounds like a lot, but even the most optimistic analyst projections were blown away in 2010 when (only one year later!) a remarkable 8.2 billion apps were downloaded.

Since Apple launched their app store in 2008, over 10 billion mobile apps have been downloaded from the store. In late 2010, Pew Internet released a report called “Rise of the Apps Culture”. Among the key numbers in the report, one in particular stood out for me: 35% of all US adults had apps on their cellular phones.

Another study, “Sizing up the Global Apps Market”, had equally impressive stats. The number of app stores, which in 2008 was less than 5, had skyrocketed to nearly 50 by February of 2010.

With the recent announcement by AppBistro—that they are launching white label app stores that will make it possible for any publisher to create a custom app store—this number is certain to grow even more rapidly for the foreseeable future.

Looking further out, the numbers go from optimistic (the Yankee Group is predicting that nearly 7 billion U.S. smartphone app downloads will garner $4.2 billion in revenue by 2013), to wacky, (Gartner projects that as many as 17.7 billion mobile apps will be downloaded in 2011, a 117 percent increase from the 8.2 billion apps they say were downloaded last year). Also, according to the Gartner report, mobile app store revenue hit $5.2 billion last year, with an expected increase of about 190 percent to $15.1 billion in 2011. Perhaps even more impressive,

Mary Meeker and Matt Murphy both of Kleiner Perkins just presented a slide deck on mobile trends that among other things projects that global mobile traffic will grow 26 times over the next  5 years.

The New Disrupters

Just like in the 90’s when new web technologies threatened—and frequently succeeded—to disrupt entire industries, what’s happening today with mobile applications is creating a laundry

list of the next great companies.

● Instagram (which just hit their 2 millionth download), PicPlz and Path look like a next generation of flickr

● Foursquare and Gowalla have created entirely new kinds of social networks built from the ground up with a mobile user in mind

● Square has given everyone the ability to process credit card transactions once again changing the way people conduct personal commerce just as PayPal did in the late 90’s

● Shazam has fundamentally changed how people discover new music, making the process mobile and more spontaneous—further disintermediating record labels and physical stores

● Rovio is looking a lot like the next giant gaming company

● Thousands of novelty apps from androidify to doggy squeak toys (seriously) have replaced the dancing babies and flying toasters people were sending around over a decade ago

All of these companies and the applications they have developed threaten to topple the existing business paradigms in their respective niche. It was this same cycle of disruptive innovation that led to the explosion of web sites and web content during the dot-com boom, and it’s disruptive innovation—this time centered around mobile applications—that will power the growth of these technologies and the value they create today.

So how can you capitalize on this next great tech wave? The same way the winners did last time. Figure out what people want and then deliver it to them using the new version of the Internet—the one delivered via apps. If you’re able to give people a better, faster, more tailored mobile experience, you’ll be one of the disruptors. By precipitating change, you’ll create value. Those that do this best will win. After all, someone is going to create the next Facebook and someone out there is building the next Google. Disruption is in the air, and to me, it looks a lot like 1996 all over again.（source:techcrunch.com）