Whatever else might be said about the iPhone SDK (software development kit) and software distribution model Apple recently unveiled, it changes the way software is delivered from the developer to the customer.
Developers don’t need a marketing department to sell iPhone software if they are assured that all customers will be checking the same software category listings at iTunes Store. Heck, they don’t need a software company at all. A really good programmer (suddenly unemployed) could fit an iPhone development project in between job interviews, and given the ease of development the SDK offers, could have a useful piece of software on the market by the time the job offers started to come in.
I doubt this is the beginning of a new business model for software development, but with programming getting easier and easier, the distribution system for software will have to get more casual in one way or another. When it takes only a few hundred hours of development work to create new software, you don’t want the distribution channel to become a barrier between the developers and the users.
