Is 100,000 apps in the App Store too many?
The Apple App Store, and the number of apps that it contains and which are downloaded from it, have been given a great deal of the credit for the success of the iPhone, but when is enough enough?
It was announced this morning that the Apple App Store now contains 100,000 apps. That is a truly large number, and one which Apple has every right to be proud of. No one else is even close to this number at this point: not Blackberry, not Pre, not Android. It is truly a stunning variety of applications, running the gamut from free games to $100 GPS navigation systems. The question is, when does that huge pile of apps, many of which perform similar functions, become too big to find anything in?
Apple does not seem to be worrying about that, seeming to care more about the big numbers (100,000 apps, billions downloaded) than anything else. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, is quoted in a PR Newswire release as saying, “The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world. The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”
Congratulations are undoubtedly due for all of the record numbers that the App Store has put up in so short a period of time. At some level, though, Apple is beginning to look a lot like McDonald’s (Billions Served!), an image that is quite different than the one that the Cupertino company usually tries to project. It is possible, one supposes, that each and every one of those 100,000 apps is of the highest quality and right on the leading edge of computing technology, but one seriously doubts that is the case.
It is very easy to become menu-impaired when in the App Store section of iTunes. There is so much white noise in there that it has almost stopped being fun to look for new apps. Asking around, it seems that a lot of people have quit going there to shop, and enter the App Store only to buy an app recommended by a friend or a blogger. One hundred thousand of anything is too many to paw through looking for that special one that you just have to have. Sometimes enough is too much.
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