Via The iPhone Blog: The rumblings and grumblings over Apple’s App Store approval process are growing louder with the news that the recently submitted update to the Tweetie Twitter client was rejected for returning offensive words in the search results of the public Twitter “Trends” rankings.
There’s been a lot of complaining about the quality and consistency of the approval process for new and updated apps in the App Store, but this one seems to be potentially very damaging to the lure of the App Storefor developers. The business model is the best thing going for it – 70% cut of the sale price with no additional charges from telcos being taken off, but with the glut of content already in the App Store (see Mobclix’ stats on the makeup of the 27,000+ apps now online) time-to-market is very important for developers.
Having an uncertain approval process only makes it less enticing for developers to have a go. When some apps get approved and similar ones don’t, or when updates to previously accepted apps are rejected because of functionality that was already there, or content that is brought in from the web and not controlled by the developer (nor could it be by Apple with it’s own tools like Safari!), it makes new developers particularly more cautious.
This is a message that Nokia and Ovi should be listening to. The business model for Publish To Ovi looks similar to the App Store, but because customers can still pay by SMS, the operators are still entitled to a slice of your 70% rev share. Given my experience with Nokia Download, I have some idea as to what operator involvement can mean to the end revenue for developers, but I’m going to give Ovi a go regardless.
As Ovi’s publisher approval process has yet to be completed, I can’t comment on what that looks like, but if I were Nokia right now, I would be making sure that the message I was sending to developers was reassuring them that the approval process was a lot smoother than “some other app stores” out there. After investing blood, sweat, tears and in some cases real cash, developers don’t want to be tripped up in the process of just getting it our to customers through these types of channels.
Who knows, perhaps we’ll see the same trend with Ovi, Android Market and other OEM-driven app stores that we saw with the iPhone App Store – those who got in early were the biggest winners because content discovery for them was easier with less content cluttering up the deck. Perhaps with the wider variety of devices (and sheer greater number of devices compared to the iPhone) Ovi publishers will find it easier to cut through and achieve some “real” sales and generate a reasonable return on investment. Time will tell …
