“It’s tough to discover those kinds of apps”

The most interesting one is the revelation that around 400,000 App Store apps get no downloads, are invisible to users and have no ranking.

“The reality is there are only a couple of thousand apps that really make some kind of downloads,” Christian Henschel, Adeven CEO, told me. “This is based on Apple’s closed system — it’s tough to discover those kinds of apps.”

While I agree that discovering apps is difficult, and I buy that only a tiny fraction of Apps on the store are ever actually downloaded — let alone used. But I fail to see what “Apple’s closed system” has to do with it.

Apple has a closed ecosystem. All iOS Apps are only available from a single place. No one is denying that. How does that make it any more or less difficult to find apps than, say, Android?

The only advantage that Android’s Play Store has over the App Store in regards to discovering new apps is the “Top 25 New Apps” view in the store. And that’s got nothing to do with open or closed.

[Update]: Also; I’d argue that the fact that apps like Weather Neue, The TapBots apps, etc. have gotten so popular show that the App Store is working. These aren’t apps from huge companies. They’re from indie developers. They rose up because they work well, and are beautifully designed. And while I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions, the same can’t be said for the vast majority of the the apps that don’t get downloaded.