A couple months ago I had an idea. One of those, “I wonder if this would work” ideas. I talked it over with Chris and we both decided it was probably a good idea, but we weren’t quite sure (we needed feedback from potential users and customers), and we didn’t want to invest much time into it if it wasn’t what developers wanted. At the same time, we didn’t want to reveal too many hints about the idea.
I ended up creating a simple poll about Apple’s App Store and posting it to Hacker News. I wanted to learn what makes Apple’s App Store tick. Why do developers really love it? The results (I received 75 submissions) weren’t earth shattering, but they were interesting. Here’s a rough overview followed by a synopsis:
- A majority of developers would rather write native apps over web apps in an ideal world. This actually surprised me, and I believe this sentiment is quickly changing.
- Of those who would rather write native apps, a majority do so because of the App Store over any other reason (including available APIs, performance, language). This is super interesting to me as it means that the platform itself isn’t the killer feature of the iPhone for developers, it’s the App Store.
- When we first started AppStoreHQ, discoverability was the killer idea of the App Store, but now only 25% of the developers said that discoverability was what made the App Store tick. In fact, discoverability might be hurting the App Store at this point. (Note: This is where we, AppStoreHQ, come in.)
- Over 70% of the developers say the killer idea of the App Store is payments. Developers want to get paid for their work as easily as possible. This is huge, fascinating, and (to me) surprising.
- For the developers who chose web apps over native apps, over 50% said it was because of cross-platform (write-once, run-anywhere) issues, but a full 25% said it was due to not having to deal with Apple.
Synopsis:
The thing that popped out the most to me is that the App Store is the killer feature of the Apple platform, rather than anything dealing with the device itself. When you start to boil it down, it sounds a lot like Jeff Bezos’ reasoning for Amazon Web Services. Jeff likes to talk about how when you’re starting a brick and mortar store, for instance, you don’t have to worry about setting up your own electricity; you simply call the electric company. In the same way, with AWS you no longer have to set up a data center, buy servers, etc; you just call up AWS. Jeff calls this “the muck.”
I think this is exactly what developers see in the App Store. The App Store removes a ton of muck. Most importantly (from this survey at least), dealing with credit cards and payments is one of the biggest pains for developers, and the App Store completely shields developers from it.
The iPhone platform succeeds because the App Store “removes the muck.”
