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by zmitri 4743 days ago
Pretty impressive answer, and I agree for the most part.

I do believe there are a lot of apps that do get Apple's approval and get showcased, but never really make it -- which you do address. A great example in the video space is Vyclone which go promoted very much, and still gets front page promotions quite often, but they never really went anywhere.
1 comments
2pasc 4743 days ago
Sure. Your app can be featured by Apple like Intuit got displayed prominently in Walmart in the 1980s. But on the web, Vyclone would be available on download.com, not get accessed through millions of search terms on google (like Yelp, eBay, Airbnb, Craigslist, Amazon, Trulia, Linkedin, even Facebook ...all consumer web public/quasi public Companies ...)
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zmitri 4743 days ago
Do you think that exposure makes the marketplace more attractive or actually has a role in helping make hits?

Even though app search services do exist -- like Quixey https://www.quixey.com I'm not sure if they make sense for most consumers. How do you currently search for apps? Is it by functionality or because you hear about it from a friend?

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2pasc 4743 days ago
Exposure helps make hits for sure... AppGratis was the best proof of that.

The problem of App Search is that app search is a small fragment of the overall search market, and that most searches on the web are for one data point (e.g. search for Chez Panisse restaurant in berkeley or weather in Cupertino). If you have a frequent use case (Yelp, Uber) or an infrequent but very important one (Opentable, Trulia), you are going to download the app. But otherwise? You are going to keep searching on Google, not on the AppStore or on Quixey.

The only way around that would be to index the content of the web content of the app themselves. It would be great, but only Apple can really do that right now... and they are not even trying to. That would be in my mind the only way to make app discovery a reality.

Now for productivity apps/games, they correspond to highly used or niche applications...but are people really looking for them? In the early days of PC games, people were reading review magazines and going to their local Best Buy to discover the best games, and the app store is no exception. I don't see how Quixey would help me there since most of the best games I have played on the iPhone are impossible to describe and you would never have searched for them if Apple had not showed them in front of you...

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