garrettross:

Jul 14 2011

Another thought on the App Store… The App Store overall is a really good thing. It provides a great marketplace for developers and can eliminate a fairly significant chunk of time and money by not having to roll your own store. There are marketing advantages, opportunities for reviews, and probably my most favorite is as a user there is now an easy way to manage software installs and updates across multiple computers.  But, and you knew there was going to be a but, there is one thing I wish that Apple would do. I wish that Apple would remove themselves from the Top Paid and Top Grossing categories. I understand that Apple needs to market their products as well and that their products deserve high placement on the store. After all, it is their store. But I would recommend that they make their own section of “Apple” software. Make it prominent, allow people to review, and make it easy for newcomers who just want Apple software to view and access it in one place.  I think doing something like this would actually increase credibility of the App Store, not only for the developers, but for the new customer. Right now, 9 of the top 10 Grossing and 7 of the top 10 Paid are Apple products. Apple products also hold the top selling position in the following categories: Developer Tools, Photography, Productivity, and Social Networking. Basically every category that they have software in. This ends up hiding great apps like Reeder, Hype, Transmit, and Pixelmator that otherwise would continue to hold their top spots on the main page, providing them more continuos visibility. It would also expand the visibility to more products, the ones that are in that top top 5-10% of quality, rather than just the top 1-3%. And that could be very valuable to a lot of developers. Besides the obvious that front page visibility makes significant impacts for sales. It also demotivates the value of competition. It is a given that Apple software products will almost always outsell other software products. So the hope of ever holding a #1 spot as a product is not even a possibility. The most you’ll ever be able to hope for is saying we’re 1st, right behind Apple. Just click on the category page and drill down. You’ll see us there… 

Another thought on the App Store…

The App Store overall is a really good thing. It provides a great marketplace for developers and can eliminate a fairly significant chunk of time and money by not having to roll your own store. There are marketing advantages, opportunities for reviews, and probably my most favorite is as a user there is now an easy way to manage software installs and updates across multiple computers. 

But, and you knew there was going to be a but, there is one thing I wish that Apple would do. I wish that Apple would remove themselves from the Top Paid and Top Grossing categories. I understand that Apple needs to market their products as well and that their products deserve high placement on the store. After all, it is their store. But I would recommend that they make their own section of “Apple” software. Make it prominent, allow people to review, and make it easy for newcomers who just want Apple software to view and access it in one place. 

I think doing something like this would actually increase credibility of the App Store, not only for the developers, but for the new customer. Right now, 9 of the top 10 Grossing and 7 of the top 10 Paid are Apple products. Apple products also hold the top selling position in the following categories: Developer Tools, Photography, Productivity, and Social Networking. Basically every category that they have software in. This ends up hiding great apps like Reeder, Hype, Transmit, and Pixelmator that otherwise would continue to hold their top spots on the main page, providing them more continuos visibility. It would also expand the visibility to more products, the ones that are in that top top 5-10% of quality, rather than just the top 1-3%. And that could be very valuable to a lot of developers.

Besides the obvious that front page visibility makes significant impacts for sales. It also demotivates the value of competition. It is a given that Apple software products will almost always outsell other software products. So the hope of ever holding a #1 spot as a product is not even a possibility. The most you’ll ever be able to hope for is saying we’re 1st, right behind Apple. Just click on the category page and drill down. You’ll see us there…