Apple today has rolled out a new series of pages on the iPhone section of its website called “Apps For Everything.” The idea here is to create an easy way for consumers to find apps based around certain categories that they may be interested in.
The categories are:
- apps for cooks
- apps for keeping current
- apps for the great outdoors
- apps for music
- apps for work
- apps for music
- apps for students
- apps for moms & dads
- apps for working out
- apps for going out
- apps for managing money
- apps for traveling
- apps for fun & games
As you can see, all of these seem geared towards your average consumer across varying demographics. That’s hardly surprising seeing as with 2 billion app downloads (and counting) now, Apple clearly has a very wide reach.
But app discovery has been a problem for Apple in the past. It’s a good problem to have — it exists because there are so many apps (85,000) — but Apple is clearly realizing it needs to do something about it. The App Genius feature was one step, this hand-picked curation is clearly another.
I’ve asked Apple how it picked the topics for these apps, as well as the apps themselves, and will update if I hear back. But I suspect that just like the other areas where Apple highlights certain apps (such as in the App Store itself), it is doing so based on (what it deems to be) merit and the ability to show off some cool functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch.
As Jonathan points out in the comments below, this is also a great way for Apple to expose apps to the broader web, for users who don’t have or don’t want to load up iTunes to learn about some apps.
Much of the apps featured seem to be ones that Apple has featured in the past in the App Store or even in its commercials. It should be no surprise that developers who have been a part of this attention in the past say that the spotlight has helped drive sales through the roof.
I know why they’re doing this, to save money.
Since the App Store is closed in the iTunes ecosystem, there’s no way for people to Google an iPhone app they’re looking for. Most people still go to a search engine to find something, even if it’s trapped in iTunes.
Apple is paying a king’s ransom in it’s affiliate program because other sites are cashing in on this weakness by developing their own app databases and review sites that rank highly for longtail keywords that Apple can’t target because iTunes is closed to search bots.
It’s about time they used their own website to drive traffic to the iTunes store.
that’s a very good point.
Thank you
Yes, its high time Apple exposed its Apps. But i wonder how it will be like to sort 85000 apps. A nightmare, really.
If there was a Like this comment option, I’d click it.
hint hint techcrunch
Except if that was the case, they could just recreate the entire DB of Apps in the same fashion as their standard Mac downloads now, with affiliate links that open iTunes. Apple doesn’t mind providing an ecosystem for other web sites to flourish. They do mind user confusion and softies saying there are 85,000 fart apps.
Yeah, I completely agree. I don’t think it was at all about saving a few affiliate bucks (that is small dollars). It’s about selling more iPhones (see my comment below).
Great point. There’s a small cottage industry of these sites catering to iPhone app searchers. There was even a tutorial on Lifehacker not too long ago showing how to find iPhone apps using Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Makes sense too.
That’s a great point and that is why we created a new way to distribute the app store among friends or on a content site with Appsfire.com
For example see what we’ve done in 2 secs by creating an embed widget of all the cooks apps suggested by Apple
http://appsfire...title=Cook+Apps
Since I work in marketing, I was finding it harder to keep track of what brands are doing on the iPhone. Just started this google spreadsheet to only list apps from major brands: http://j.mp/brandedapps. Obviously not targeted toward everyone but hope it will be useful to people in the space.
Nice work. I tweeted an article on your spreadsheet yesterday. We only recently created a category for branded apps at http://smokinap....com/tag/brand/ We still have some work to do in terms of re-tagging our existing branded apps and growing the catalog. Your spreadsheet will make a great reference.
Frustrating Apple is essentially trying to pick the winners in each main category instead of letting the users decide. I can understand the business decision, but I believe it can lead to poorer quality and poorer reviewed apps being promoted.
In my case, our ski app (skireport.com) was the #1 ski app in the store last year with over 100k installs and 5k reviews… yet they still continue to push the branded ‘North Face’ app and the paid version (by OnTheSnow) despite having less reviews, poorer reviews, and significantly less installs (see their new ‘outdoors’ section).
Hopefully over time they don’t completely prevent the wisdom of the crowds to pick the winner.
+1
Though I don’t think crowdsourcing implies better quality and better reviewed apps to be promoted (your case is a bit specific), it does seem a bit more “fair” than Apple hand-picking the apps.
Ultimately, though, Apple may simply be marketing the iPhone and not apps. Why would someone who has an iPhone/iPod Touch already go on Apple’s homepage instead of the App Store? Doubt that they would.
Instead, this home page is primarily for folks who don’t already have an iPhone. For them, tying the iPhone to powerful, well-known brands is an extremely savvy marketing trick. Let’s say the Sportacular app, for example, is better than ESPN ScoreCenter. Does that necessarily mean that someone who is on Apple’s site is going to be more “wow”-ed by Sportacular? Probably not. Rather, they see ESPN, CNN, North Face and other brands flocking to the iPhone and their subconscious positive associations of these brands kicks in.
Of course, the unfortunate collateral damage is that indie developers with no brand (but fantastic products) are underserved on Apple’s website. Really sucks, but I wonder what’s better for indie developers as a whole: for Apple to sell more iPhones or for Apple to promote more indie apps on the store?
Jonathan, SmokinApps.com is doing exactly that. We are building our own app database by making recommendations to visitors everyday on the most useful and entertaining apps across a range of mobile platforms. We then leave it up to our visitors to content filter the best of the best apps. We launched a couple of months ago and are already starting to see the rewards in terms of long tail keywords.
you got “apps for music” twice in your list
Check out http://www.appolicious.com — you can a) look for apps by people like you (as Apple is doing) b) look for apps by people you follow or c) look for apps that the broader Appolicious community owns. You can also then directly message that person — “hey was this app worth it? do you think this app is good for my 5 year old?”
Unfortunately the best way to find iPhone apps is not in the app store. Like you say, good problem to have, but the iTunes app store needs better filtering/search tools.
I find that the best way to find iPhone apps is to search Twitter with “iPhone” the category you’re looking for. If you get too many low relevance results, try again adding “app” to the search string.
we’re using http://www.uquery.com for our app finding needs .. pretty cool and easy to use.
Or you can just go to a site that does unbiased iPhone app reviews like http://www.appreview.com. That way you don’t get the Apple bias (cough, no Google Voice, cough)
Good comments here, I think it’s widely acknowledged that the AppStore needs an overhaul to accomodate an unbiased, searchable, user-friendly approach to what’s available!
best freakin news I’ve heard all day. let’s hope the overhaul is actually… well… better. (not that it’d be that hard to make it better than its current form heh)
ok correction… step in the right direction.. LLOOOONG way to go.