Application Store Problems
A while ago, I posted about the affect of $1 iPhone applications. Today, I was pointed to a post by Craig Hockenberry. It’s in the form of a letter to ‘Steve’ and explains how even well reputed iPhone developers are finding it hard to gain visibility and make a living.
I think there are lessons here for all the companies trying to play catch up and create their own application store. Apple’s store has problems. As I have mentioned previously, the Android Market also has problems before e-commerce has even been enabled.
Apple and Google’s approach has been to allow the market to reach its own balance based on comments, ratings and popularity. It has been shown that this isn’t working and new ideas are needed to promote applications worthy of a higher selling price. Some ideas for improvement include the possibility of demo versions, fully featured web sites listing all the applications (especially for Android) and some way to moderate comments and ratings (see my previous post for ideas on this).
If application store owners don’t address these issues then developers won’t be creating applications of the complexity that these platforms deserve.
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