Is Apple Doing Enough To Promote Third Party Apps?
June 14, 2012
The Worldwide Developers Conference continues in San Francisco, California. Among the topics being discussed between Apple employees and developers is how to better promote third-party apps in the App Store, according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, Apple’s Senior Vice President for Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, said Apple was doing a “tremendous amount” to help apps get discovered. Specifically, he mentioned the redesigned App Store in iOS 6, which provides more information about each app, as well as Facebook “Like” buttons.
Additionally, Apple is said to be offering new tools “buried in the code” that should help developers better reach customers. These include new tools developers can use to gather data from repeat customers, as well as new ways developers can localize their apps.
Schiller, however, states that "more can be done to help users have control over what apps and advertisers want to do with data."
Despite the changes, not all developers are happy with how Apple is handling the promotion of apps in the App Store.
For example, Ben Hamey, co-founder of Bonobo Pte, states:
The design of the store is basically the same as when it had only a thousand apps. The top 100 paid apps list is very static and difficult to penetrate even with significant app sales.While we have yet to dig into the iOS 6 code to see those changes mentioned above, we have had the opportunity to see how the App Store in the next iOS compares to the current version. As you can see by the screenshots, the mobile App Store looks a lot like iTunes in OS X. Apple has also improved each app's information page. These now include subpages for details, reviews, and related apps. While we're thrilled to see Apple doing more for developers, we understand their concerns. Unfortunately, as the number of apps available increases, the problem will likely get even more dire. What could Apple do to help better promote third party apps?
