Merits and Demerits of 6 Major App Stores

Today, app stores are widely popular and these facilitate the app developers to showcase, market as well sell their apps. The app stores are also accessed by various customers and web users who search mobile apps in order to purchase or download them. As you know, there are a good number of app stores on the internet and each app store has its own distinguishing feature on grounds of presentation, price, etc. Even the same apps are showcased and rated in different ways in each app store and this brings a lot of thoughts whether to buy or not in the minds of the customers. Lets checkout the best app stores by dealing with the merits and demerits of some major App Stores today’s market.

This App Store was created by Apple Inc., the manufacturer of Apple devices such as iPod, iPad, etc in order to let its customers to download free as well as paid applications from the iTunes Store onto devices like iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Merits: This is perhaps the biggest app store in the web having above 1,00,000 applications and accompanies the widest category of apps starting from fun apps to the most serious ones. This app store features a large number of free apps while the paid ones are reasonable too. The biggest merit is the iTunes as no other app store provides this.

Demerits: In this app store, apps with the maximum download or the most downloaded apps are showcased significantly. If you are an iPhone user, the only recommended store from where you can install apps for your device is the Apple App Store. This store holds duplicity of a good number of apps in their ‘lite’ versions. Lastly, the recent inclusion of policies by Apple is much restraining.

The Google Android Market, now know as Google Play wasn’t much popular in the initial days but now it has grown up into a large hub of apps and is quite popular. According to experts, this app store is likely to dominate the all time prevailing Apple App Store.

Merits: The Google Plat Store features nearly 250,000 applications and here, the developers just need to pay a low fee of $25 in order to register. Hence, if you are a developer, you can register paying less and do check important things to do before submitting your app to theGoogle Play Store. This is the app store where apps are available at low costs and as a matter of fact, each thing in this store is categorized finely.

Demerits: You will have to think over the quality of apps after you check them and the most important thing is that this app store is only applicable for 29 countries, as set by Google. The developers from other exclusive nations can only submit free apps and according to the experience of many developers, the app store is broadly split.

The BlackBerry App World is running since April 2009 when it came up live to the web and has established itself as one of the potentially strong app stores making available more than 3500 apps. The showcasing of apps in this store is finely arranged with categories making the search of apps easier.

Merits: The showcasing of the apps is neat and finely arranged in systematic categories and this is in fact, the only app store that supports Paypal billing. Above all, this is the only app store that pays its developers 80% of the sales.

Demerits: Products are much expensive as it features high-end apps and complains of issues in the installation of apps keep in rolling by customers. Users of certain countries (not all) are enabled to have access to the store and for registration as a developer, it takes $200.

The Nokia Ovi Store has its center of attention on 5 main categories which are Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music. The services of Ovi can be accessed by Nokia mobile, Nokia Ovi Suite on PC and through the Web.

Merits: The showcasing of items in this store is neat and fine, hence user friendly and the most amazing fact about this store is that developers need not pay in order to register. The developers’ apps are promoted by Nokia with no extra fee.

Demerits: The one and only demerit about this app store is that it showcases only a few apps currently.

This store came up with a good number of apps in less time but the Microsoft Windows Marketplace for Mobile is not that impressive like other app stores. Well, it has some positive sides as well.

Merits: The apps presented here are all well tested and this store is capable of featuring nearly 400 apps in one single month.

Demerits: Every individual developer has to pay a fee of $99 for registration while developers are limited to some countries only for access. The developers are allowed to sell their apps one single country and if a developer intends to feature an app in more than one country, he or she will have to pay an additional $10 per country. Each user is enabled to try apps freely for 5 times with no costs applied but after the 5th try; he or she needs to pay $99 per try further. The apps displayed in this store are only applicable on 6.1 and 6.5 OS

There is a big pro of the Samsung Application Store as it supports Pocket PC platforms such as Symbian and many others. The apps here are tested well and are kept with proper record. Time and time again, the Samsung Application Store gets into various promotional events such as contests in order to provide significant prize money to the winning developer.

Merits: The user interface of this store is clean and is well designed with each listing or item costing just $10. The apps are tested well before presenting them on the store.