iPhone apps burgeoning, but is demand starting to falter?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 01 December 2008 05:06

IT Industry - Market

It's taken less than five months for 10,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod touch to appear in Apple's App Store.

Apple was originally criticised for not supporting third-party applications on the iPhone, but eventually released a development kit. In June, such software began to be sold (or given away) through the App Store within the iTunes Store.

Before the end of November, the cumulative count of products in the App Store had expanded from the 500 at launch to 10,000.

The current catalogue appears to be slightly smaller due to developers discontinuing certain applications and Apple pulling some after changing its mind about them after they went on sale (eg, the notorious $1000 do-nothing I Am Rich application).

But choice is good, right? Yeah, well...

Unfortunately, the iPhone and iPod touch have lots of software in the same sense as Windows has lots of software. You don't actually need dozens (hundreds?) of programs that all do the same thing, you need one that does the job well.

The classic example has to be apps that generate a white screen so you can use the device as a torch (flashlight). There is more than enough of those. Sure, there are variations such as different colours (remember the torch you had when you were about seven years old?), but I can't get excited.

The other problem (though you might not see it as such) is the number of applications that are merely front-ends to web pages or web applications. Yes, they probably make life a little easier than using the underlying service via Safari, but you have to ask about the morality of selling an application that piggybacks on someone else's freely-provided work.

Why more isn't necessarily better, and where the current apps action is - page 2.