As we previously covered, Microsoft has been making a push of its age ratings for apps and will unpublish noncompliant apps from the Windows Store soon. To perhaps add insult to developers, Apple too reportedly has plans to clean up their own App Store as well, and it’s leading the AdDuplex head to argue that bad apps aren’t the problem in app stores.
Overall, Alan Mendelevich argues that “an App store provides an infrastructure to facilitate transactions, but users acquire apps and games from developers via the app store.” He also argues that “with app stores, an app developer and publishers are the customers.” App developers are “are paying money to the app store and end users are paying money to app developers via the app store.”
As customers, then, app developers are not well served by having their apps “purged,” Mendelevich argues.
Additionally, the problem isn’t “crapps” (which Apple and Microsoft are cracking down on), but crappy app discovery
The problem of app stores is not that there are many crappy apps in them…What app stores [have to] want to achieve, is expose high quality apps well above the low quality ones. And that’s where they fail….The actual problem is crappy app discovery for good apps in the app stores, not mere availability of not so good apps.
Ultimately, though, Alan disagrees with Apple’s and Microsoft’s moves to purge their respected app stores of certain apps. While he argues that customers of an operating system are not the same as customers of an app store, he also believes that the purge of an app store will be bad for customers.
Alan Mendelevich’s comments can be seen as quite controversial, so we would love to hear what you make of it! Be sure to drop us a comment below telling us your take on this app store situation.
