#176: Make it up in Volume

Towards a Better App Store: Part 2

Make it up in Volume

This is Part 2 of an ongoing series trying to explore practical ways that the App Store could be better for customers. Today I’m going to talk about the Store’s size.

The size of the App Store’s catalog is often thrown around as a valuable, useful metric for judging the heath and vitality of the ecosystem. That may have been true before a certain scale. There is value in having a diverse and deep inventory that mets every need but beyond a certain point it completely looses relevance. Duplication, ‘spamming’ and decay of older apps hurts the store more than helps it. In many ways the incredible volume of the Store is at the core of many of the other challenges it faces. App Review takes longer than developers would like. Search becomes tricky. Editorially curating new arrivals becomes daunting.

It isn’t an easy problem to solve. How do you determine which apps should be allowed in w