Apple has won ABI Research’s Competitive Assessment of mobile application storefronts, with Google finishing second and Microsoft third. In the assessment, the leading app distributors were ranked by two dimensions: implementation and innovation.
In terms of implementation, Apple came first, ahead of Google and RIM. The company’s superior performance in this dimension is mainly down to its effective approach to monetization, large market share over the app industry, and the ability to achieve a large inventory of titles while maintaining a reasonably strict quality control.
However, in the innovation dimension Apple is narrowly beaten by Microsoft, with Google claiming the third spot. ABI Research is particularly impressed by Microsoft’s fresh approach to app discovery, as well as Windows Phone store’s overall solid usability. Discovery is an area that has been given significant importance, because when a customer arrives at an app storefront much of the following download activity is based on how the vendor presents and highlights its inventory, especially through various charts.
Senior analyst Aapo Markkanen commented in the press release, “Although Apple has done a great job capitalizing on App Store’s head start as an app distributor, it should really start re-thinking the way it charts the top apps. Microsoft should be lauded for its initiative to extend its ranking algorithm beyond raw download figures, by including factors that can actually measure the customer satisfaction and retention. Retention-based charts are less prone to manipulation, so as an additional plus Microsoft can also afford being more transparent about its approach. Moves like this can help break the developers free from the ‘tyranny of downloads’, decrease their reliance on costly marketing campaigns, and thus lower the barriers to entry.”
These findings are from ABI Research’s Mobile Application Markets Research Service, which focuses on the distribution and the economics of mobile apps, providing data-driven insights on areas such as download volumes, revenues and business models, plus trends within different applications categories.
Source: ABI Research
MacDailyNews Take: It’s easy to win in “app discovery” when you have far, far, far fewer apps to deal with and present.
That said, Apple should continue working hard to improve the App Store’s app discovery algorithm(s) and presentation(s).
App discovery would be so much easier if Apple would just embrace Boolean search (AND NOT OR MUST).
App discovery is pretty easy when you only have a dozen or so apps to “discover” in the first place…
A tad unfair as with Apple you have so many choices and categories, but with Microsoft you simply sing song eeny meeny miny moe… And then pick.
I’d definitely like to see Apple track how much an app is actually *used* instead of just downloaded once and possibly deleted.
At Microsoft, every new day brings a new App or two. When you pay developers big bucks to develop Apps for your loser tablets, you expect new App discoveries daily.
Retention is easy when there are no options.
I just want Apple to bring back a list rather than the idiotic coverflow mode the results come in now. Yuck.
So MS will be able to say many times that they’ve doubled the apps available. They won’t say from 30 to 60.
Would be WAY BETTER if Apple would show what percentage of dowloaders kept the app. Now, Apps that get downloaded, then deleted in a week still help the App float to the top…
All credit to Microsoft for getting one aspect right. It’s a much better idea to rank apps according to how much they are used, rather than how many times they are downloaded. When you have as many apps as Apple offers, intelligent ranking systems are even more useful.
There is the issue that the algorithm could be tweaked to favour one app against another, but I think that overall it’s a huge step in the right direction and one that Apple should also implement.
Apple doesn’t worry about market share when selling Macs or phones, why is market share the only feature taken into consideration when ranking apps ?