News - Sixty per cent of App Store apps have never been downloaded?

[HEXUS]

400,000 iOS App Store apps are zombies claims Adeven analytics.

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[edvinasm]

All apps free or paid should have trials where people would rate them. If average 4-3 star rating is not reached - get them out of the store. Too much of rubbish. Same goes for Android and Steam btw.

[brasco]

When are people going to realise that having 650,000 apps is not a good thing... I'd rather have 500 amazing apps over a million rubbish ones. It's like ISPs touting access to 644 million websites!

[Rob_B]

Did I miss where the said the % of android apps not downloaded?..,

Brasco, excuse me if ive read your post wrong it sounds like you are dissing ios and im assuming are in favour of android? Having more apps does not mean the % of rubbish is higher, hence the article showing that android has 3x as many flashlight apps!

I'd argue it's harder to get noticed on android than iOS.

To be fair the vast majority of apps on both platforms suck

[kingpotnoodle]

To be fair the vast majority of apps on both platforms suck

Just like the majority of software on any platform... but at least the search tools (Google, Bing) are better when searching for PC applications and there is more background information to find.

The App Store curators *should* not just approve any old tat -if there are 10 flashlight apps already then unless yours is demonstrably adding new functionality it should get rejected - both to make it easier for the user and protect the revenue and ideas of people who got their first. Diluting revenue amongst thousands of devs for the same idea helps nobody get ahead.

[Rob_B]

Except the app store curators who are getting their 30% ! it's all about the mon-ay!

[brasco]

Brasco, excuse me if ive read your post wrong it sounds like you are dissing ios and im assuming are in favour of android? Having more apps does not mean the % of rubbish is higher, hence the article showing that android has 3x as many flashlight apps!

Not at all, I own iPhone, Android and WP7 phones, I like a good deal from each of them.

I wasn't talking percentages or meaning to single out IOS (it was just the bigger number), there are just so many low quality apps that the marketing teams seem to think are part of the attraction to their OS. I'd put it in the same category as touting any bigger number to sound better (PC world/curries etc) "An amazing 536,870,912 bytes of Memory for just £999!"

[TheVoice]

This is why I largely rely on word-of-mouth to find new apps. Navigating the Play Store (and I'm sure it's no different for iOS et al) is essentially just an exercise in scrolling through loads and loads of garbage.

[CarrierPigeon]

Reviews are good places to determine whether the apps are rubbish or not - that's what I do anyways.
And I think the data here are perfectly normal - once you start getting more things, people will get picky. If you can't develop good apps that attract attention, them you are going out of business. Simple as that.

[crossy]

Brasco, excuse me if ive read your post wrong it sounds like you are dissing ios and im assuming are in favour of android? Having more apps does not mean the % of rubbish is higher, hence the article showing that android has 3x as many flashlight apps!
To be fair the vast majority of apps on both platforms suck

Now I am pro-android and I'll argue that iOS has a worse problem - simply because Apple chose to flaunt their size superiority (our app store is bigger than yours ... neenar, neenar!), for some reason (best known to their marketing department) equating "more" with "better".
That out of the way, I'm going to agree with you in that BOTH app stores have way too much filler - especially sound boards on Play - I really think sound boards and themes aren't apps and really shouldn't be in the apps section.
But instead of progress we now have Apple, Google and Microsoft busy waving the size of their respective stores at each other like kind of juvenile locker-room display ... idiots!

Just like the majority of software on any platform... but at least the search tools (Google, Bing) are better when searching for PC applications and there is more background information to find.

The App Store curators *should* not just approve any old tat -if there are 10 flashlight apps already then unless yours is demonstrably adding new functionality it should get rejected - both to make it easier for the user and protect the revenue and ideas of people who got their first. Diluting revenue amongst thousands of devs for the same idea helps nobody get ahead.

Agree totally. And I'm not sure about iOS/iTAS but I find it so much easier to search the Google Play store with a web browser on a desktop PC and push the app out, than firing up Play on the phone/tablet and pulling the app down.
This might be allowable for Apple, but I still can't believe how mind-shreddingly poor the Play search is. FFS Google, give us something akin to "full fat" Google search for the Play store!

Reviews are good places to determine whether the apps are rubbish or not - that's what I do anyways.
And I think the data here are perfectly normal - once you start getting more things, people will get picky. If you can't develop good apps that attract attention, them you are going out of business. Simple as that.

Podcasts are my friend in that respect. If you're an Android user then I find the "Android Arena" feature on the All About Android podcast is most helpful, especially the video version. The Android App Show audio podcast is also a useful source of "tips".
Presumably there's similar useful sources of info for the iOS and WP7 fan?

[Jude188]

Wow! I guess the market is harder to break into than I thought!