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Last updated: Friday, December 12, 2008

Within days of a well-publicized open letter from a developer complaining about how the dominance of free and 99-cent applications in Apple’s iPhone App Store was hurting software development, Apple has made some changes. The store has added the 20 top free and top paid lists in each category. Apps can be sorted by the user according to popularity, release date, or price. Previously, Apple listed the top free and paid apps on the home page. The rankings are based on the number of downloads. ‘Ringtone Apps’ Earlier this week, Craig Hockenberry, a principal at Greensboro, N.C.-based IconFactory, posted on his blog, furbo.com, an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “As an iPhone developer who’s been in the App Store since its launch,” he wrote, “I’m starting to see a trend that concerns me.” This trend, he continues, is that “developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get placement on iTunes,” and the “proliferation of 99-cent ‘ringtone apps’” is affecting product development. The problem, he said, is funding the development of products. Instead of working on “cooler (and more complex)” ideas, he wrote, which require more development time, they’re working on 99-cent titles “that have a limited life span and broad appeal.” Bigger projects, he noted, can take up to nine person-months, cost up to $225,000 and require sales of more than 300,000 units at the 99-cent rate. “Unless you have a white-hot title, selling 10-15k units a day for a few weeks isn’t going to happen,” he said. But raising prices meant the product wouldn’t reach the top of the App Store charts, Hockenberry added. Hockenberry said one basic issue is how iPhone users are assessing whether to buy new apps. He noted that it appears “people are buying our products sight unseen,” with only a screenshot to evaluate…

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Apple Tweaks App Store Interface After Complaints

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