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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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Author: The Fonecast
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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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Opinion Articles

‘The Eyes Have It’ at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

DoCoMo are one of many network operators and handset manufacturers demonstrating innovative new products as Mobile World Congress. Our eye was caught by the employee demonstrating “Eye Controlled Earphones”. It’s a good job the ladies from the CBOSS stand weren’t walking past at the time.

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'Mobile Money Monday' at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Monday’s Mobile World Congress conference agenda dedicated one of 4 streams to Mobile Money - Transfers, Transactions and Technology allowing all stakeholders to share experiences and debate the future of Mobile and Money.

Two types of service dominated presentations and panel discussions; Near Field Communication (NFC) technology enabling payment at traditional Point of Sale (PoS), and the Mobile Wallet replacing plastic or cash.

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‘Innovation Corner’ at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Here’s my pick of the 3 most innovative companies I’ve uncovered at the 2010 Mobile World Congress.

Cootek.com win the prize for simplest innovation... an accurate touch screen keyboard. They’re a few months away from being ready to release the software to handset manufacturers, but the demo handsets worked very well. The keyboard assumes the user is not going to press the intended key, but in fact might miss and press another key in the same area. Based on this knowledge and an extensive dictionary of words and language context, it’s able to determine the intended word with surprising accuracy. I sincerely hope their technology will be made available for the Nexus One in the not too distant future.

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Google “Mobile First” from Eric Schmidt’s Key Note at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, presented a compelling vision of a mobile centric future. The phone has become the “high value end point” for Google services enabled by a combination of increasing handset power, mobile data networks and cloud computing. By far the scarcest resource is the bandwidth available through the mobile data networks. Google appear committed to work with Mobile Network Operators (MNO) to maximise bandwidth usage, although several audience questions suggested scepticism from the main stream mobile industry. Eric expressed a need to maintain a harmonious relationship with MNOs stating Google could not operate its service on mobile devices without their co-operation.

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The great Windows Mobile 7 conspiracy theory

Mark Bridge writes:

I like a good conspiracy theory. A good one, mind you. None of this “Funny thing happened on the way to Mars” nonsense. Oh no, not me. And, despite occasionally mirroring Jerry Fletcher by balancing a bottle on the door handle, I’ve never been inclined to publish such a theory. Until now.

You see, it’s Mobile World Congress in a fortnight’s time. Which is when the great and the good of the mobile industry – along with their mates and hangers-on – head for Barcelona. Microsoft will be there. They’re holding a press briefing on Monday afternoon. And there’s a lot of talk about Windows Mobile 7 being (unofficially) on the agenda. But where’s the evidence?

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