Is the honeymoon over for Apple's iPhone content shop? Owain Bennallack thinks so...
Not long ago Apple celebrated over one billion individual downloads, proving huge traction for the service in the space of just nine months.
True, expectations in certain quarters were so optimistic that some projections will have been missed. Early talk of $25 games soon looked silly, with even $10 games now a rarity. The most popular paid-for games cost $5 or less; the most popular apps are free.
Price deflation hasn’t been the only hiccup. Congestion in the marketplace has led to calls for everything from a revamp of the store’s categorisation and listings to premium sections and a ban on free or Lite software.
For iPhone owners, it’s all good. Cheaper prices and more choice have no downside for them, at least in the short-term, and iPhone users love their phones.
Apple has in ten months done what the mobile industry failed to do in ten years – training its customers to repeatedly download and buy software over the air, and turning them into enthusiastic evangelists for mobile content.
Article continues belowAdvertisement
2009 will throw up several new challenges for the App Store ecosystem, however...
To read the full article, head on over to ME sister site CasualGaming.biz.
