New iPhone Ads Showcase Looming App Store Predicament

Never one to rest on its laurels, Apple is piling on following its record Q3 with a big push for the holidays. Today, it launched its opening salvo for the season with “Gift” (above) and “Song” (after the jump). The former, in typical fashion, starts with something immediately relevant (using the Target app to get gift recommendations) before going off on tangents (photo editing, “Monopoly,” Zipcar?).

“Song,” meanwhile pretty much just goes full-on for the “There’s an app for that” mantra, touching on real estate, The Sims, Facebook, and Shazam. And honestly, in both cases, it’s pretty effective. There are more than 100,000 apps, after all, even if there’s no Google Voice. The campaign works because it’s welcoming and says you can find what you want to do easily. (via MacRumors)

Unfortunately, that selling point is actually pretty different from the real experience of using the App Store. Once you hit 100,000, discoverability becomes the killer app, not any single product within. This isn’t that big a problem yet (except for developers), but it will become an increasing one over time. What good are 100,000 apps when I struggle to use more than 10 on a daily basis?

Consider this: iTunes offers more than 10 million songs, but lots of users have several thousands of songs (I have nearly 5,000 and add more every year). Assuming that the average for a power user is around 2,000 songs per user, that rounds out to there being 5,000 songs to every one that most people download.

With apps, by contrast, there are 100,000, but I would guess most power users carry fewer than 30 on them at any given time (I’m actually closer to 20 beyond the initial set). That’s 3,300 apps per one download, a ratio that starts to get really dramatic as the app store grows toward a million choices but people install no more of them. It’s already pretty rough trying to break through as an obscure band on iTunes — it could get much worse as the ratio grows increasingly unfavorable for apps.

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Fortunately, problems tend to highlight opportunities to innovate. Everyone knows that a more robust Springboard app is needed to help us sort through our many apps to find the one we want when we want it. Apple could also come up with new forms of App Store search to better surface apps better suited to you (imagine if Genius for Apps worked!), or it could take note of developers whose work you’ve enjoyed previously and recommend those. Moreover, Apple could even offer different ways to market oneself on the App Store. We’re used to bundling on the desktop side; why shouldn’t there by an iPhoneHeist next year to bring together rock stars with rising contenders on the fastest-growing platform ever?

The growth of the iPhone has been fascinating. OS 1.0 was about defining a new kind of mobile experience. OS 2.0 was about opening the platform to true development and making it more than just a product. OS 3.0 has been about fixing the most-requested problems, including MMS, copy-and-paste, and tethering (not that AT&T has implemented the latter). OS 4.0, it seems to be, would be an excellent time to figure out how one might actually benefit from owning a couple hundred different apps.

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About the author

Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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Posted in Advertising, iPhone Apps, Opinions |

Joseph
“Once you hit 100,000, discoverability becomes the killer app, not any single product within.”
Not everybody has the same taste, so the huge selection at the app store is a big selling point. But completely agree that discoverability is a problem. Apple needs to significantly improve iTunes to help people find or discover the apps they want.
iGenius
The real problem is not having so many apps. The problem is that there are so may worthless apps, with no way to find what you might want.
If there was a source of apps where the value is reviewed before the app goes on sale, (like any normal retail outlet) the problem would be solved.
If I could get apps from Amazon, and Amazon carried only the apps that sold well, then I’d have a good source. And if I could get cool apps from a noted seller of iPhone games, who sold the kind of stuff that is worth buying… And/or if I could go to a source of weird, perverse iPhone apps… And/or…
You get the picture. Having 100,000 apps is great. Not being able to determine quality from the reputation of the retailer is a huge problem. I wish that there were other better sources of apps.
Donna
Apple just needs a more powerful search engine.
Like:
A way for me to hide certain app authors forever.
(Let’s face it… I REALLY don’t ever need to see any app written by that author that recently flooded the store with all those useless, similar apps. He wrote 1 puzzle-app… but you have to pay $1 for *EACH* picture for the puzzle. And each 1 is sold as a totally separate app.)
A way for me to NEVER see any app that is rated less than 2 stars.
Full “AND OR NOT” and WILDCARD type searching.
A way to block certain “review authors”. (The ones that say nothing valuable, and just posts “this sucks” type reviews…. never telling you WHY they don’t like the app.)
Every iPhone needs “folders” so I can better sort my apps.
And fix all the bugs, Apple:
“Writing reviews” has never really worked for me. When I try to write a 2nd review for the same app… it just edits my old review instead.
jbelkin
Kind of arrogant of you to presume that you don’t need more than 10 apps, no one else does? Do you only have 10 CD’s or DVD’s and say the rest are crap also? Do you have more than 10 items in your house? How can you claim to be an expert on empathy when you apparently don’t understand the phrase? That because it’s “too hard” for you to sort through more than 10 apps, no one else should? Maybe you need a new line of work.
Rich R
For good app search, try http://appexplorer.com/
I find it much more useful than the App Store.
Martin Hill
You’re right! Quick we’d better also burn all but 1,000 books as I’d never read more than that in my life and discoverability is a bitch!
And we’d better delete all but 100,000 web pages as I’d never read more than that and people never go beyond the first page of google anyway…
*rolls eyes*
(As far as discoverability is concerned, you do realise there are plenty of web sites out there designed to help discover new apps? Unbelievable)
AdamC
You download what you need and use and if you have to struggle than there is something wrong with you because competency is not in your vocabulary.
iphonerulez
What you’re saying is that the average supermarket is too big. The average department store is too large. Forget about a Costco or a large metropolitan library. You probably want to go back to the general store days when you could see everything the store had by just turning your head a few degrees. What is so terrible about having choices. Just spend some time doing searches and you might even discover stuff you weren’t even looking for. There are other web sites that have information on the latest apps and such. This complaining about too many apps (for you) doesn’t really matter. Life won’t always go according to your plans.
Maybe you should learn to practice searching because in a year from now there are going to be double the amount of present apps, so you better just get used to it.
http://blog.tice.de/?sprache=englisch Tice
I never understud why Apple people bought the idea of the App Store.
I mean: Where did you get all the apps for your computer from? From the free, open, uncensored internet (kind of). There are millions of apps and you can even choose another search engine than Google!
Why buying a device that is limited to a one (1!) provider and has a big censor in the back who decides which app you get?
I like the iPhone, but never bought one because of this. You complain about it? Why did you bought an iPhone anyway?
http://proappreviews.com/ JeffCliff
There are certainly a lot of applications that you don’t need. What you are supposed to do for getting information about the most relevant app for you iphone to reads authentic app reviews which would definitely guide you towards to right app you need.