Earlier today, Apple revealed its second quarter earnings. And while the company beat expectations (once again) and had a record quarter (once again), that's not what caught our attention during their conference call. It was actually this answer, given by Apple COO Timothy Cook, to a question posed to him about the App Store:
Q: Charles Wolf (Needham & Company): Okay, well, let me ask a question about the App Store then -- in terms of application prices, there appears to be a race to the bottom. I’ve noticed that there’s an increasing number of $0.99 offerings. Do you regard this as a concern and if so, are you taking any steps to enable consumers to separate quality apps from the garbage?
Timothy D. Cook (Apple): Charlie, we are always looking for ways to categorize apps differently and we do have some ideas in this area. As you know, today we do it by type of App and also have show popular apps and top-selling apps, et cetera.
We realize there’s opportunity there for further improvement and are working on that.
The current app store layout, as MacRumors points out, is unfair to more expensive applications. While they may not be purchased by hundreds of thousands of people for $0.99, they are just as important, if not more important, to the iPhone experience. Yet they don't often appear on the top 100 paid apps list because they don't get the purchasing volume cheaper apps experience.
More expensive apps like the $9.99 DopplerPad (which we reviewed earlier today) need a fairer system for getting into the App store rankings. There needs to be additional ways to organize application content that is easier on the user. In addition, there needs to be a new method for determining the top paid apps in the iPhone app store.