Neil HughesApple's iOS platform is widely considered to have the best mobile application ecosystem, and a new analysis of the App Store comparing it to Google Play for Android and the Amazon Appstore for Kindle Fire supports the notion that Apple remains head and shoulders above the competition.
The three digital download destinations were pitted against one another in the Pfeiffer Report's "2013 App Store Maturity Shootout." All three stores were compared in four key categories: search, discovery assistance, an evaluation grid maturity score, and user experience friction.
When the overall results for each mobile application store were tallied by Pfeiffer, Apple was the clear top choice, earning a score of 53.1 out of 100. That handily beat Google Play, which scored 40.9, as well as the Amazon Appstore, coming in with a score of 34.1.
Pfeiffer still sees a great deal of room for improvement for Apple's iOS App Store, particularly in making it a destination where users can more clearly learn more about applications and trends in the market.
"Current app stores do not fully reflect the breadth and richness of apps that are out there," the report states. "They work fine if all you are interested in is the next bestselling game. If, on the other hand, you are talking about a truly original app — one that will drive the platform forward if it gets widely used — (then) the chances of being discovered are slim."
In terms of individual rankings, Apple blew away the competition in terms of discovery assistance and content curation, earning 44 out of 100 compared to an 8.4 for the Amazon Appstore and 2.25 for Google Play. Apple's iOS App Store was also the clear leader in the eight-category "evaluation grid" maturity ranking, which focused on factors such as clearly-labeled tablet-specific apps, as well as editorial content and recommendations.
Apple lagged behind its chief competition, Google Play, when search capabilities and user experience friction were put to the test. Pfeiffer believes Apple should add natural language search to the App Store, and that the company should address what it sees as a "somewhat overpowering app store structure."
The three application stores were rated based on Pfeiffer's "2013 App Store Reference Definition," which the firm calls "an idealized set of features for a mature, sophisticated app store." The firm's proprietary "gold standard" serves as an independent reference by which to compare the different platforms from Apple, Google and Amazon.
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20 Comments
And they include Amazon & Google in the shootout. How childish ¡
[quote name="PhilBoogie" url="/t/160778/apples-ios-app-store-still-handily-trumps-google-amp-amazon-offerings-in-new-analysis#post_2436294"]And they include Amazon & Google in the shootout. How childish ¡[/quote] At least the report didn't come from IDC or Gartner so we can completely rely on this one. ;)
Apple should not do this, this is how Google pushes people to the things it wants you to see and use, ie they paid Google to push you towards them. Apple does not care about pushing users to one program over another thus the reason developer and users like it. The best bubbles to the top not force to the top because someone bought their way there.
I personally never had an issue finding what I was looking for, i have seen some apps which I would have found sooner than later and they did not come up in the search and the reason being, the developer descriptions of the app was not that good, and that is their fault not the stores fault.
I am not sure how this company came up with its ideal score, so it is ideal to have 500 sub-categories, how did they determine that.
[quote name="Gatorguy" url="/t/160778/apples-ios-app-store-still-handily-trumps-google-amp-amazon-offerings-in-new-analysis#post_2436296"]At least the report didn't come from IDC or Gartner so we can completely rely on this one. ;)[/quote] Ha! Well, it was posted on the internet, so it must be true. I just don't get the large difference from this analysis. Are the App Stores from Amazon & Google really that bad? I know people can 'side load' software from some plaice other than what Google offers, but this works for Amazon as well I presume? Maybe people get their software from these other places and their Stores therefore get low scores as they don't feel any incentive to do something about it. Or whatever, I really couldn't care any less than I already do for these other Stores as they don't offer anything for my devices. That might be a narrow-minded view, but I like the devices I use and won't switch to something else in order to access anything these Stores have to offer.
While Apple's ecosystem is by far the best, I am getting tired of these breathless pronouncements of 'hundreds of thousands of apps' and 'billions of downloads' and 'hundreds of categories' and so so forth. Such numbers have actually become the problem. The App Store has become a mess. I have trouble finding anything anymore (unless I am specifically looking for it), the organization of categories is a bit chaotic, reviews and historical ratings are not readily apparent unless you dig a couple of levels deeper (the App Store only displays reviews of the current version, most of the time with zero reviews or ratings; most users don't bother with writing multiple reviews), etc. Updates to the iOS, form factor, OSX and XCode also mean that many apps are not current in terms of their full functionality or they have lots of quirks and bugs -- many developers have trouble keeping up. So much so that my app downloads have slowed to a crawl. I am using my iOS devices to look at the web far more than I used to.