Are smartphone apps “applications” or “features”?
Andy Payne wrote an interesting analysis about the future of the "software industry" or whatever we should call it nowadays (e.g. is Amazon a software company?)
Not long ago a classic "put down" of a business idea was: "that's not a business, it's a product", or worse, "that's not a product it's a feature." Andy asks:
"As friction goes away, things become much more fine-grained. You don’t need $5m anymore to start a company: a laptop and a cafe wifi connection will do. This enables an explosion of new projects, but with smaller teams and narrower ideas. The industry gorilla platforms fuel a “feature ecosystem”: are those icons on your phone “apps” or “features”? Viewed in person terms: a thousand 100-person software teams might now be 30,000 3-person teams. Software is no longer a sport of kings." (from blog.payne.org)