iPhone apps burgeoning, but is demand starting to falter?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 01 December 2008 04:06

IT Industry - Market

I have no problem where there's real added value, such as an app that uses GPS to automatically retrieve some kind of geographic data (eg the nearest cafe or public toilet, depending on whether your need is for input or output).

But if all the app does is provide an iPhone-native form and then screen-scrape and present the results, that doesn't seem quite right to me.

In the early days of the App Store, novelty items seemed to dominate, but now the focus seems to have switched to games.

In Australia, games account for eight of the top ten paid apps and six of the top ten free apps. US figures are similar at seven and six, respectively, and in the UK it's seven and five.

Titles such as Cro-Mag Rally and Flick Fishing are among the popular paid games.

In September, Apple announced 100 million iPhone/iPod touch applications had been downloaded from the App Store.

But if everything's going so smoothly, why are some developers cutting prices? For example, Pangea (developer of Cro-Mag Rally) has put all its games on sale at just $US0.99 until December 2.

Is this just traditional discounting for the US post-thanksgiving shopping season, or is this another sign of slowing of discretionary spending as the fear of job losses and mortgage foreclosures spreads?