Phil Schiller: Apple making major changes to the App Store


In an interview with Jim Dalrymple, Apple VP Phil Schiller outlined some policy changes and new features for Apple's App Store. The changes are coming out later this year.

Recently I posted on some interesting stats that the review times for apps have been significantly trending downwards. As it turns out, this was by design as Apple has worked to improve its review process:

He said that Apple does about 100,000 app reviews per week and that they've developed new processes to make reviews faster, while maintaining the quality that Apple, and its customers, expect.

The end result is that Apple has a sustained rate of reviewing 50% of apps in 24 hours and 90% in 48 hours.

Apple is also revamping its subscription model. Now subscriptions won't be limited to only news and similar apps. Apple will also adjust its revenue spit from to be the current 70/30 in the first year and then 85/15 in the second.

The third area relates to discovering apps. No longer will users see apps recommended that they have installed, which should make more room for unknown apps. Also returning is the ability to browse by categories of apps. Also it will become easier to recommend apps with others via a share sheet.

What will likely be more controversial, Apple is opening its app search to ads. Now when searching for Twitter, for example, a develop can pay to be the top result as an ad.

The search has not worked that well for me over the years. Most notably, sometimes it was just easier to search Google for an app than the App Store itself. Paid placement just seems either a money grab or an attempt to appease big time developers.