Bloomberg published an interesting article last night surrounding Apple potentially pursuing building a “secret team" to explore various potential App Store changes. It doesn’t seem that far fetched, as it’s not hard to find both iOS developers and iOS gamers who have something to say about how the App Store has truly grown out of its original design. Additionally, following last year’s leadership shake-up it seems even more likely that it won’t be long before we see some serious changes on the App Store, making this more of a matter of “when" and “what" rather than a matter of “if."
Among the ideas allegedly proposed includes paid search, which Google has more or less built their empire on. Effectively, this means that developers might potentially be able to pay Apple to show up with search results much like how Google works. The potential danger here is that this could create an even further divide between the have’s and the have-not’s on the App Store, as indies certainly won’t be able to afford to keep their games at the top of search results while the Supercells of the world will be able to go absolutely HAM.
If nothing else, getting into the paid search game might potentially allow Apple to soak up some of the millions and millions of dollars currently being spent by developers across various user acquisition networks. I’m not sure it’s the best solution, but as long as Apple does something it’s better than what we have now. The amount of junk on the App Store seems to be growing every day, and discovery has been a problem for years.
[via Bloomberg]
