msmobiles.com/f

[msmobiles.com_robot]

Let's face it: in the era of central application stores - already available for Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, Apple iPhone and coming next year to Windows Mobile too - there is no point in 3rd party online stores...

Read more at http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/7823.html

[kdarling]

Statistics are useless without their base.

What is 40% in this case? 2 out of 5 people? 4 out of 10?

[thelondonthing]

Er... there is a HUGE number of small and medium-sized organisations, large corporations, and transnational super-companies that are laying off workers.

In case you hadn't heard, the world is experiencing something of an economic crisis, and everyone from Citigroup and HBOS to your local bakery or butchers is axing staff.

A 40% cut in workers may sound like a lot, but given the macroeconomic context that sets the backdrop to this decision, it also sounds like Handango was substantially overstaffed, and that there is no better time than now to make massive efficiency improvements in order to save money and make their business model more viable.

A business model is not simply about one thing, which is what your article presupposes. You seem to be hinging the alleged collapse of the Handango/third-party app store on the arrival of centralised platform-specific application stores.

This is like saying that the arrival of a Starbucks on your doorstep means that you'll never have coffee anywhere else ever again, and that there's no future in independent coffee outlets.

In fact, that's exactly what people were saying just a few years ago when Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Caffe Nero et.al. carpet-bombed our high streets and shopping centres with a massive overdose of sterile, homogenised coffee houses. Naysayers and scaremongers pointed to the closure of many independent cafes, saying that soon, none of them would be left.

Trouble is, while that was certainly true for a short period of time, it didn't hold water for very long. Now, we sit back and observe as the international coffee houses realise that having three branches on the same high street is sheer lunacy, at a time when more and more people are enjoying the boutique style and personal service of a local independent outlet.

Just as then, it appears that people such as the author of this article are willing to make sweeping and damning judgements about the future of a market sector, without really thinking it through on any level. I mean, seriously, this is pretty basic stuff - I'm not talking post-graduate economics here.

The market is adjusting, and virtually every organisation in the industrialised world is having to adjust along with it, not least through reallocation and disposal of human resources. Why should Handango be singled out with such a poorly written and considered article just because this website has a vendetta against them?

Can't msmobiles stick to just reporting Windows Mobile news? Whenever you write one of these 'commentary' pieces, it's just embarrassing and cringeworthy to read through them, and to observe at first hand just how dense (or perhaps just desperate for attention) the authors of these articles are.

[alcedes]

Yeah, word of layoffs is not unusual in the USA. Many of my friends have been laid off in previous months (two of them were laid off more than once in the past few months)
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MCAD .Net , MCTS (Web, Windows)

[Hobo]

This doesn't surprise me. In the beginning Handango took just 20% commission. Now they take around 75% (not 50% like they claim), which comes across as either greedy or desperate. Payments are now routinely late and/or incorrect and it is difficult to get a response from them. Microsoft really must roll out an on device store asap. Developers like me are already investing time in learning the Apple iPhone SDK and buying Apple hardware. Windows Mobile has never exactly been lucrative except for a select few. Without an app store it will become a wasteland.