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Crowded iPhone AppStore prompting Apple for a refresh?

By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 2:32 PM

The AppStore is a lot of things, but it’s not an easy place to navigate. With over 65,000 iPhone apps available, discovery of new applications is becoming an increasingly serious problem. If you’ve even casually kept tabs on Apple’s top iPhone apps lists, you’ll probably have noticed that there’s a lot of turnover in the AppStore. Don’t worry, Apple knows it too. Apple’s top executive Tim Cook recently admitted to the AppStore’s “discoverability” problem and confirmed that Apple is working on “some ideas.”

appstore-under-construction

The AppStore’s first birthday was marked by an announcement that 1.5 billion apps had been downloaded to iPhones and iPod Touch devices around the world. But, says Cook, “We realize there’s opportunity there for further improvement and are working on that.”

A more user-friendly iPhone AppStore will be a welcome change to iPhone developers struggling to gain traction in a catalog of more than 65,000 iPhone apps. Let’s hope the changes are more significant than longer “Top lists.”

[Via: AppleInsider]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • Dusan Belic

    Adding ability for shareware apps would solve tons of things. There really are no reasons that a single app/game exists in full and lite version – a single instance is all we need, plus a key that would unlock the full version…

  • Fastdue.com

    Better granularity of the sub-categories would be a big help. The useful apps tend to get crowded out by the novelties, and it’s hard to differentiate an accounting or invoicing app from one that finds you a hotel or a job for example. It shouldn’t be that hard to make logical subcategories to make it very easy to find exactly what you want- even with a large base of apps.