Apple, Isn’t it High Time to Renovate the App Stores?

Mobile apps had never penetrated the vogue ever before as with iPhone and iPod Touch. Millions of downloads and thousands of programs have filliped the apps market. With more apps making its way into the iPhones and iPods, it has metamorphosed the way mobile has been used for all these years. Probably it’s the easy accessibility to the apps that has encouraged the downloads. The are all jaw for the Apple but there are things to be probed into unveil the hidden truths.

To be very clear Apple store faces a dual challenge. There’s a section that expects Apple to generate experimental, simpler and short lived apps which would be available for free or at cheaper prices. Meanwhile the developers would be awaiting a viable platform to develop films high on price.

Here are certain things that apple needs to improve upon

Categorization of Apps

Already 15,000 apps and still expanding, so there’s a growing need for categorizing them in order to highlight the products. Currently, its the topper on the App Store list that rules the roost. Apple has excuses for that expanding its list to 100 apps per category. It offers the Staff Picks, What’s Hot and New, as well as the Noteworthy lists. Still more can be done to  button down the apps.

The developers expects Apple to list the top apps in order of the most recent week, month or year. For more, the iTune Genius tool must recommend apps depending on the programs the user has. Even better, if the users should be allowed to recommend apps to each other. At present the Apple store visitors can only e-mail recommendations from the store. Another suggestion could include a mechanism where one could see what their friends or other contacts are playing.

New payment mechanism

Currently developers sells their apps one at a time without charging for additional content. This is essentially a shortcoming that can be improved upon. Apple could device a mechanism for micro-payments or subscription services. This would further encourage the developers to improve upon the existing or new programs.

Background processing of apps

If background processing for apps is available the users won’t have to launch the apps to receive the alerts and updates. Moreover the developers would also be able to access the iPhone or iPod hardware. It’ll also allow them to display the video demos of their apps in the App Store.

With the competing application stores Palm, Windows Mobile and Research in Motion accelerating Apple’s gotta think of changes to make the App store more developer and user friendly.