Polar Bear Farm

Ahead of the iPhone OS 3.0 event this week, I thought I’d write a little on the state of the platform as we see it here. A little over a year after the initial launch, the honeymoon is over, and I think the coming months are going to be pivotal in determining the long term nature and perception people have of the App Store and the platform in general:

Is it going be a place which accommodates people who are looking for a wide range of apps to complement their iPhone or iPod, irrespective of price?

Or is going to continue to be a $1 shop, where the best of the cheapest are most visible, and therefore most successful, irrespective of value provided.

In the past 8 months, the flaws of the App Store have been exposed, and they’re not insignificant. There have been sporadic welcome improvements, the most recent being changes to the review system, something which although improved, I’d still argue it’s of limited utility in its current form. But there’s still a long way to go.

The problem in judging the success of the App Store is that there is no yard stick to measure it by. There’s no existing system which is comparable. I think that makes it harder for Apple to spot issues with it, after all, looking at the uptake and the revenues the store is generating, I guess it’s hard for Apple to justify on a financial basis, that the store could perform better with changes. I’m not arguing for a second that the App Store hasn’t been hugely successful, I’m questioning, could it be even more successful for everyone with some changes?

I and other developers have been pushing for some fundamental changes to the way the App Store operates. Changes which I believe will benefit iPhone developers, Apple, and customers a like. Changes which acknowledge the fundamental differences between selling apps, and selling music.

The most significant issue as it stands is quite simple. It’s the built in One Price Fits All Assumption which permeates almost every aspect of the store.

There have been many a commentator try to trivialize this issue, saying that it’s not a problem with the store, that the store is simply a warehouse of apps not a marketing avenue, and that developers can counter this by simply marketing their products.

The thing these people miss, is that the store isn’t a warehouse, it does have a store front, it does promote products, both through featured placement, and the Top 100 lists. To ignore that is ridiculous. Having created a great product, developers really are at the mercy of these two areas of the store. The advertising expense required to shift an app up the charts any significant way is prohibitive to the point of being uneconomic with the current system. For us, advertising is used for purposes other than generating immediate direct sales.

What about a “Velvet Rope” area on the store?

Last week Wired revived a rumor from a while back about Apple opening a Premium App Store. They suggest it could consist of apps of $20 or more, as a way of pulling more substantial apps above the noise of all the $1 and free apps. While this is surely better than nothing, the problem I have with this idea as rumored, is that it doesn’t address the real issue. Essentially all this does is turn the one price fits all assumption, to a two prices fits all assumption.

As long as app rankings are biased so heavily towards download numbers, rather than revenue generated, you’ll see unsustainable pressure on pricing. You’ll see the same thing happen in any Premium App Store built around this same premise. All the $30, $50 apps will be relegated to the depths of the rankings, pressuring prices towards $20, just as we’ve seen prices pushed to $1 in the existing store. In this scenario how does this help $10 apps? $15 apps? Why not address the real issue instead, and solve the problem completely?

Time for an App Store Roadmap?

One of the things I’d love to see out of Tuesdays event, above any device improvements or additions, is a roadmap of what changes, if any, are planned for the App Store. It’s easily the most frustrating part of developing for the iPhone, not from a technical point of view, but from a business point of view. Apple have created a device and development tools which are so far ahead of anything else, it’s frustrating to see the App Sore not live up to it’s potential. So I’d love Apple to layout their plans for future App Store changes. This is an area which significantly affects the types and scale of products we build, some clarity from Apple would be hugely useful.

Layton Duncan