“With the new user interface, iOS7 is going to make Q4 2013 an interesting time to be a developer selling apps on Apple’s mobile devices,” Ewan Spence writes for Forbes. “With the changes to the look and feel of the core experience, any third party application that does not update itself is going to have many users thinking ‘this app looks tired.'”
“With a wealth of options in the App Store, I suspect that many users given two apps with the same functionality will choose the app that looks like iOS 7. And if that is a new app that’s going replace an app on their handset, then the switch will be made,” Spence writes. “What a fantastic move on the part of Tim Cook’s Apple.”
Spence writes, “This is the moment that developers large and small should be ready for, because the income distribution is going to radically shift. Users will be ready to pay a switching cost (both financial and mental) with the arrival of iOS 7. This is a huge opportunity for developers looking to get into a new space in the App Store and make a name for themselves. Existing developers will want to hold on to their user base, and perhaps reboot many of their applications and start with a blank piece of paper.”
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