counternotions

[Daily Questions (DQs) — where we post one question per day for discussion — are back.]

Netherlands-based Layar is one of the better known ‘augmented reality’ mobile browsers that started out on Android. You can also find it the Apple App Store. Layar CEO Raimo van der Klein, however, isn’t a fan of Apple or AAPL.

From Raimo’s recent Twitter stream, following the Apple-bashing opening at Google’s I/O developer conference:

The next day, taking it up a notch:

Here we have a curious case of a CEO of an “App Store developer” literally advising people on Twitter to dump their Apple stock (on a day where AAPL gained $4.56/1.92% to $242.32). Raimo isn’t sure how or if Apple will survive the year, given his giddy outlook on the just-announced Google/Android news.

Clearly, Raimo has a right to hold his opinions and to try to short Apple’s stock in his own way. It’s also pretty obvious where he thinks the future of mobile apps is. He is a cross-platform developer, with no allegiance to an ecosystem which feeds him and his company.

When Apple looks after its own and its customers’ interests by essentially saying if you want to play in our garden you need to play with our tools and rules (think section 3.3.1), it’s branded as evil. When cross-platform developers display such naked disregard and active hostility towards Apple and its financial welfare that makes the App Store possible, what do we think about their mercenary attitude?

What should we think of Apple-bashing App Store developers?