When you look at the incredible sales and download numbers of the iTunes iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app store, what you have got to remember is that the majority of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users are Windows users. Lots of people have iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, and they own and use Windows PCs. The phones, tablets and music players work great with Windows PCs.
Without all those Windows users buying and downloading apps from the iTunes store, would it be as successful? If you look back at the history of the iPod, it didn't really take off until it was made compatible with Windows PCs. When you could plug it into a Windows PC and download and install iTunes people got really interested in the device and sales rocketed. Without those Windows users Apple wouldn't dominate the music and music player market as it does now.
The Mac App Store is by definition only for Apple Macs and they have a world-wide market share of less than 10%. There are millions of Mac users of course, and no doubt many will find a Mac App Store very useful for finding and buying software over the internet. However, the Mac market is small in comparison to the Windows market, and therefore it follows that Mac App Store sales will also be small too. We're not going to see the huge sales figures and massive profits that iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch developers have earned.
The Mac App Store will only be a minor success in a minor market and the one way to make it a game-changer that will revolutionise the software industry is to sell Windows software. Is that idea so bizarre? No. iTunes already runs on Windows PCs and Windows users can download and buy software right now. Of course, they have to install it on their iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, but couldn't they install it in Windows instead? It's hard to see a reason why not.
We'll soon see the Mac App Store and get to explore it for real rather than simply speculate about it. I doubt whether it will sell Windows software on day one and it is almost certainly going to be Mac only, but surely Apple must be thinking of selling Windows software at some point in the future. For 90% of computer users the launch of the Mac App Store is a non-event. It's just something for the Apple fanboys. People will only sit up and take notice when Apple starts selling Windows software.
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