With iOS 8, Apple Increases The Value Of Its Ecosystem But Only Marginally Improves App Marketing
My colleague Ted Schadler explained here how Apple's iOS 8 focuses on developers building new mobile moments.
Once again, Apple increases the value of its ecosystem and will create more stickiness and loyalty by enabling developers and marketers to build new app experiences. The first building block to tap into the new opportunities that wearables and connected objects are opening up is to create a service ecosystem. That’s the reason we haven't heard any product announcements yesterday.
From a marketing standpoint, Apple introduced some new App Store features for developers, like app previews and app bundles. Marketers will be able to let users buy multiple games or apps at once and for a discounted price. App listings can now include feature video demonstrations to showcase the value of your app. The new “Explore” tab – including the trending topics and the vertical scrolling – will also facilitate app discovery.
However, in comparison with the great iOS differentiated innovations announced to create new app experiences (e.g., HealthKit, HomeKit, Swift, TouchID, and open APIs), Apple mostly implemented incremental changes to its App Store marketing. Most marketers sill complain about Apple’s black box and the lack of transparency about Apple App Store’s ranking algorithm and ratings and review systems.
Apple still needs to introduce significant improvements in app search as well as new merchandizing and analytical tools to help third parties market their apps and manage their lifetime value. Interestingly, and just before WWDC, Microsoft announced the acquisition of French startup Capptain – a real-time analytics and push notification app management platform.
With 1.2 million apps now available, there's still a great risk that your app doesn't stand out from the crowd if you don’t master app store optimization techniques.