Apple announced today that the App Store has surpassed two billion apps downloaded with more than 85,000 apps available to iPhone fanatics. There's no denying that Apple's revolutionary App Store is a cultural phenomenon that should be celebrated with cute app cupcakes, obnoxious noisemakers and hand frosted iPhone cakes.
“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”
My one big hairy complaint is that a large percentage of the 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program pump out nothing but useless apps like Bikini Mafia Names, A Stupid Button and iSausage. Apps that barely rate a proper mention, except to serve as a warning to all of the iNerds in developer training diapers. Don't be a sellout kids! Create something with sustainable value.
The endless parade of useless apps featuring a different take on the digital clock, battery indicator, bikini wearing babes, guns, iFarts and flashlights mostly take up space and ultimately diminish the value of truly useful apps sold at the same price. A study by Flurry Inc., a San Francisco-based startup that tracks analytics for mobile applications, recently revealed that gimmicky entertainment apps ranked lowest in user retention and loyalty after 30 days. Which should come as no shock to most iPhone users.
The other issue plaguing the App Store's insane growth is that Apple's search functionality for the most part is a miserable experience. Even though a website like Uquery has done a stellar job of bridging the gap by providing a more intelligent search engine for iPhone apps, the sheer number of available content is still staggering.
Thousands of apps released each week will never be discovered by iPhone users. Leaving the smaller number of developers making useful apps stalled on the sidelines without an effective way of ever getting noticed. Of course they can always spend a fortune on advertising or just count on pure luck or some kind of press worthy controversy. Which translated means... QUIT NOW!
But who am I to poop on Apple's ginormous App Store celebration? If the idea here is to simply cheer on the quantity of iPhone apps rather than their usefulness and quality... then someone pass me a noisemaker already!
[Apple]
Haaaaaa-ha. Sour grapes. Go to the Zune Marketplace. You'll have no problem locating all ten apps. Actually... strike that idea. Zune blows moose dicks!
Posted by: iphonerulez | September 28, 2009 at 09:09 PM