Yes, the app store is the business model for the 21st century

In this Fast Company article, Farjad Manjood takes aim at Apple's app store gatekeeper model and points out that the company's heavy handed management is driving some high profile developers away from its app store and back to the web.

So far so good. But Farjad takes a huge leap from there and concludes that the majority of developers are likely to abandon app stores and go back to the web.

I have two problems with his analysis: 1) He analyzes one app store (Apple's) and draws conclusions that pertain to all app stores AND 2) He looks at the app store from the developers perspective and articulates well-known gripes – but he fails to look at the app store from the perspective that matters more: the buyers'!

For the last three years, buyers have showered love on the app store – as evidenced by the number of downloads and purchases (10 billion downloads and 3 billion purchases). I, in fact, submit that the Apple app store is a runaway success BECAUSE of Apple's app store policies: they extend the company's culture of excruciating focus on the user experience. Developer considerations are – well – secondary!

Further, the app store brought buyers convenience, security and trust - which were clearly lacking on the web. Let's consider for a minute what app buyers would have had to go through if the app store did not exist:

1) Locate apps on the web using search engines - a non starter -  Google is about organizing the world's information and not the world's apps. A Google search will return apps as well as articles, press releases, reviews and SEO spam. Good luck trying to find apps by categories, ratings etc…

2) Assuming a buyer is somehow able to locate an app, will he feel comfortable installing it? Will the app mess up his iphone?

3) Assuming the buyer gets over the trust concern, will he be comfortable providing his credit card number to a developer based in say -  China? Is an $1.99 app (which may or may never be used) worth the potential headaches of providing a credit card number to an unknown seller?

The Apple appstore has been a great success and is now being copied by companies in as varied industries as automotive and even utilities. Those companies are unlikely to copy Apple's app store policies and instead will come up with policies that reflect their own culture and ecosystem.

A few developers may have abandoned the Apple app store, but 100s of others join every day. Why? Because the app store solves a fundamental problem that has bedeviled all developers: how to reach out to and market to buyers?

Another example is the Amazon marketplace, considered by some as the granddaddy of app stores. It brought the convenience, security and trust of the Amazon brand to the web. Do  some sellers gripe about Amazon's marketplace rules? Sure! But this is the price they have to pay to sell to the 10s of millions of Amazon customers. The marketplace is another runaway success: it generates more than $10B in revenue.

This brings me to the conclusion: You will see a lot more app stores and I am not the only one saying that: Most companies I talk to are looking to set up their app stores. You can read more on this topic  here and here.