Gartner Predicts App Monetization Will Only get More Difficult as Time Goes On | Hacker News Reader

Gartner Predicts App Monetization Will Only get More Difficult as Time Goes On

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5 pointsericcumbee6 comments

The real problem is with the app stores. They are terribly organized for discovery of any apps, the iTunes store specifically. How are you supposed to find new apps if they're not in the "top XX" portal?

1: If search is how you access the huge variety of apps, why is the search bar hidden all the way in the top corner? When you open the app store on an iPad, you have a beautiful, but ultimately very limited view of apps.

There really needs to be, and I believe there is room in the market for, a service that helps discover new and upcoming apps. Both Apple and Google do a poor job helping users find apps they might like.

2: "Genius" is useless if you have to find apps you like first. It may help provide limited exposure to apps similar to ones you've tried, but it provides poor results if you don't know what you want in the first place.

3: Each of the categories provides only the "top XX" or "newest XX" apps. This incentivizes a cutthroat market and disincentives large investment into apps. Sure, there is a ton of VC money to chase many different app ideas, but ultimately, successful apps will need to make a return on investment. Both Apple and Google do no favors to developers by fueling the "turnover" game. You get one shot on the "new releases" board, then you're on your own for marketing outside of the app stores. In the long term, this will decrease the quality of apps on both platforms. Amazon has a shot at getting it right, and I believe this strategy may favor them in the long-term.

If you really want to win, find a way to improve discovery or "browsing" of apps. The market will follow the incentives to their logical ends, and right now, both of the big players are missing the opportunity to incentivize discovery of quality.

Nick

P.S. I don't know the solution to these problems either, but look for yourself and tell me they don't exist.

A listing of "apps that your friends are using" would be a start.

I'm really happy the App Store doesn't know who my friends are.

Strange comments. Have you ever heard of marketing? Advertising? When you create a new product and you want to get it noticed out there in the crowded world we live in, then you market your product and you advertise it. Or else you learn to be satisfied by the crumbs from people who stumble upon it as they pass by.

An App store is just a marketplace, and now the app stores have evolved beyond their unusual initial phase and are more like any other real world marketplace.

The real story is that building apps for the sake of building apps is irrelevant if they're not backing a truly useful product. That's natural; the barrier to entry becomes higher and the business starts to look like any other software market.

I don't necessarily see this as such a terrible thing, it just looks like we're not going to see the massive swings of luck that used to benefit a small minority of app developers.

This has been the trend for a long time. The reality of the app business is getting to critical mass is hard. Once there you get the attention of the portal owners and show up in the charts and you're off.

The interesting thing is even among big brands the difference between top and lower level incomes from in app purchases is enormous. The top handful really are taking the overwhelming proportion of the money home.

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