Navigating 10,000+ Apps

Apple claim “this is going to change everything”, Ed Baig in USA Today proclaims the iTunes App store the killer iPhone App but now developers are worrying about how to get noticed among thousands of Apps without dropping their price to 99 cents to get on the top app download lists.

Over 10,000 Apps, 300 million downloads, frequent updates; in short a thriving eco-system. App developers on board at the start thought they had the market sussed. But if Craig Hockenberry from the IconFactory in his open letter to Steve Jobs this week is an example there is some very fast re-adjusting of thinking to be done.

With 500 Apps, the initial version of the App Store was a hit driven machine. Top Download lists for paid and unpaid Apps drive much of the activity. In an incredibly short time we have gone from a small hit driven market and are well on the way to becoming a classic Long Tail marketplace. If the theory holds, and there is no reason to suspect otherwise, everything will sell, but the top apps will make up 50% of the sales and everyone else will have to share the remainder. With 50,000 or 100,000 Apps the marketplace itself will need to work very differently and winning in niches over time will become far more important than being the download of the week.

Business models for all but the really unique or revolutionary apps need to be different. Apple need to do some work on the market itself to allow users to sift through Apps more quickly. That is already happening in games but it needs to happen in the broad catch all categories like utilities, books and entertainment. But the marketing role is not Apple’s, it is the company selling the product.

Business plans need both a launch and a long term marketing strategy. Initial plans should include all the digital and traditional channels you would normally use to effectively reach your target market. ROI will quickly determine what channels you actually use for your available marketing dollars. The job of selling the product and price to the end user belongs to the developer not Apple. Treat iTunes as a great distribution channel and if you can tap into the extra exposure reviewers and Apple provide during your launch phase, take it as a bonus

As Peter Cohen points out this is not Field of Dreams stuff or as Anthony Franco puts it and I’m paraphrasing, get serious about creating something truly differentiating or just do a web app. Into that equation you need to factor how effective you can make your marketing.