Apple Inc.’s wildly popular App Store is celebrating its first anniversary. And it’s a hit with users: In just 12 months time, the number of mobile apps went from a few hundred to more than 65,000, and the number of app downloads by iPhone and iPod Touch users just surpassed 1.5 billion. With those numbers, Apple is leaving similar app stores launched more recently by Research in Motion Ltd. (maker of the BlackBerry Storm smartphone) and Palm Inc. (maker of the Palm Pre smartphone) in its wake.
“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” says Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, No. 5 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”
To celebrate the anniversary, Apple named its 25 favorite apps. Online shopping gets bragging rights to three of the spots. They belong to eBay Inc., Fandango and Amazon.com Inc.’s Stanza (operated by Lexcycle Inc.). This is a highly disproportionate representation, however. While retailer apps represent three of the 25 favorites, they represent only about 20 of the more than 65,000 available.
“I don’t think anyone yet has a clear idea of the return on investment of designing an iPhone app or how it fits into their overall strategy,” says Vidya Drego, a senior analyst who specializes in mobile commerce at Forrester Research Inc. “I think for the time being, given the lower cost of developing a mobile-enabled site, most retailers going into m-commerce are just sticking with that.”
A mobile app is software that runs on a smartphone and links via the mobile web to a retailer’s web servers to obtain content for display within the app. A mobile app can offer a richer, faster experience than an m-commerce site because many of the features and design elements are stored on the smartphone, and because an app can integrate with smartphone features such as an address book or GPS navigation.
Merchants with mobile apps include: 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., No. 31 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide; Amazon.com, No. 1, which offers two apps, Amazon.com and Stanza, an e-book reader and store; Apple, with two apps, the App Store and iTunes; BarnesandNoble.com Inc., No. 41; Best Buy Co. Inc., No. 10; Sears Holdings Corp., No. 7; ShopNBC.com, No. 87; Shortcovers (a unit of Indigo Books & Music Inc., No. 148); Shutterfly Inc., No. 69; Delight.com; eBay; Fandango; Godiva Chocolatier Inc.; and Moviefone.
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