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.
