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Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

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New rules from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom will protect customers when they use their mobile phone on a foreign network. In addition, customers will be alerted if they are inadvertently roaming, perhaps because they're near an international border.
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Global smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast

A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.
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Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

New Hutchison/Vodafone network would be biggest UK operator

Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.
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UK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023

UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.
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Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Which? seeks payout for Samsung and Apple smartphone owners

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
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Opinion Articles

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Android and GetJar admit that app stores aren't working

Mark Bridge writes:

The Apple App Store runs in a similar way to many high-street shops. It decides what it’ll sell. It decides what it won’t sell. It has special offers. It has free gifts. It promotes certain products above others.

Most other app stores (or ‘application stores’, as I’m sure Apple would prefer) aren’t much like retail stores. Instead they’re somewhere between a cooperative marketplace and a headless automaton. But they’re starting to change.

This week Google has announced it offers over 200,000 apps... and it’s introducing a handful of new new features for the Android Market “focused on helping you find apps you’ll love”. There are now staff recommendations and favoured developers to help customers make their choices.

Then we have GetJar, which has just acquired a company with technology that’ll help customers find the apps they need. Usability and discovery are high on the agenda.

Okay, I may have overdone the hyperbole in the headline - but I’d like to think the point is pretty clear. App stores - as they were originally set up - don’t work. They’re going the same way as mobile operator web portals.

Once, when they were new, they did okay. But now the novelty of buying any old virtual tat has worn off and the app shopping process needs to change.

It’s a point that was made yesterday by James Rosewell following BBC’s The Apprentice and is also covered in this week’s 361 degrees podcast from Ben Smith, Ewan MacLeod and Rafe Blandford.

The ultimate point of shopping is finding (and buying) what you’re looking for.  It’s not about how much stock a shop has. It’s about how good a product is and how much it costs. Specialist retailers, whether it’s chocolatiers, car showrooms or app shops, have a place alongside hypermarkets and department stores. But putting everything in a pile and letting customers search through it - especially when they don’t necessarily know the name or the appearance of the product they’re looking for - is no way to sell.

Fortunately, it looks as though app stores are realising this.

After all, even jumble sales involve a little curation before the doors are opened.

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1 comments on article "Android and GetJar admit that app stores aren't working"

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Todd Levy

5/15/2011 10:43 AM

Thank you for writing this article.
My name is Todd R. Levy and my company BloomWorlds, is developing Android’s family friendly app store, to help Android parents discover safe, secure, and appropriate apps by utilizing our hands on approach to curation.
We are a specialty app store serving a niche market, Android parents and their children.

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