Pros and Cons of Major App Stores

The App Store was originally created by Apple Inc., to help users download applications, both free and paid, from the iTunes Store onto their iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

• Probably the biggest app store, comprising more than 1,00,000 apps
• Largest category of apps, ranging from fun apps to more serious ones
• Features a whole lot of free apps. The paid ones are very reasonable
• iTunes, is Apple’s biggest advantage. No other store so far offers users this facility

• Only the most downloaded apps are featured prominently
• Using the Apple App Store is the only method a user can install apps in their iPhone
• There is duplication of many apps in the "lite" version of apps
• Apple’s recent inclusion policies are very restrictive

Though the Google Android Market had initially gotten off to a slow start, it has now grown tremendously in both size and popularity. Some experts believe that it may very soon be capable of superseding the all-powerful Apple App Store.

• The Android Market features about 250,000 apps
• Developers only pay a low fee of $25 to register
• The apps are available at low costs too
• Each item is categorized and listed out neatly

• Quality of apps leaves a lot to be desired
• Google supports only 29 countries to sell apps in their store. Developers from all other nationalities can only publish free apps
• The app store is accessible only in certain countries of the world
• Many developers feel that the app market is highly fragmented

The BlackBerry App World, which has been live from April 2009, has proved to be one of the more promising app stores, offering more than 3500 apps. The store presentation is neat and easy to navigate. Each item is categorized systematically, so finding any app becomes very easy.

• General presentation is very neat – all items are well categorized
• The only app store that supports Paypal billing
• The only one that pays developers 80% of the sales

• On the higher end among all app stores, so products are more expensive
• Some customers complain of issues during app installation
• Can only be accessed in some countries of the world
• This App Store requires the developer to pay up $200 to register his account therein

The Nokia Ovi Store focuses on five main areas, namely, Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music.

Nokia has undoubtedly put in a lot of effort on building their app store and give Apple, Microsoft and Google a run for their money. The user can access the Ovi services from his mobile device, via the Nokia Ovi Suite on his PC or even through the Web.

• User interface is clean and easy to access
• Developers need not pay to register
• Nokia takes maximum effort to promote the developer’s app, at no extra cost

The only disadvantage about the Nokia Ovi Store is that it features very few apps at the present time.

In spite of having many apps in just a few months, the Microsoft Windows Marketplace for Mobile fails to impress. Of course, there are also some positives.

• All apps are well tested  
• The app store managed to feature about 400 apps in a single month.

• Each developer is charged a registration fee of $99
• Developers are limited to certain countries only
• Developers can sell their app only in one country. If they want to feature their app in more than one country, they have to pay $10 per country
• The user is allowed 5 free app tries, after which he has to pay up $99 per try
• Functional only on 6.1 and 6.5 OS