Would you be happy if you were told by someone how much you had to charge for your application? Not in a gentle “perhaps you should try this” way , but in a “choose one of four prices, no variance.” It's not something that I think developers would take to kindly, but Research in Motion have set up a bank of fixed prices for their soon to arrive App World, with a minimum charge of $2.99 per application.

Thankfully freeware is still able to be distributed, although there will be a cost to the developer to submit to the RIM store. Any ongoing revenue streams in your app, such as embedded ads, will need to be shared with RIM.

And this is one of the problems with the over-arching App Stores coming from the manufacturers. They can pop in terms and conditions that, on closer examination, can either stifle development or guide it in certain directions. Can you see the proliferation of “Pull My Finger” applications flourishing if the free versions had to be paid to enter the catalogue, or priced at that $3 mark? You might say this is a good thing, but the concern that the main store for a device can arbitrarily close down applications or block creative endeavours is one that everyone needs to think about before they start developing. You might have the best app in the world, but if the manufacturer doesn't like it... poof, away it goes!

Even if there is a choice in app stores to shop in (you can be sure that even with the upcoming Nokia Ovi Store, Handango aren't going anywhere), any new endeavour from a handset manufacturer is going to have a massive built in advantage in terms of ability to reach the end-users, and developers would be foolish to not look to them as one of their major retail outlets.

Because of that, these stores have a responsibility to be as fair as possible. Stores are not the place to screw every last revenue opportunity out of a device; they should be somewhere that is trusted by the board of directors, the end-users and the developers; they should not force financial choices on the apps (e.g. Nokia has still have not confirmed if ad-supported apps in the Ovi store must use the Nokia Ad system, or if they are free to use their own); and they must have as level a playing field as possible for new and old developers alike.

Ivory tower thinking perhaps, but an app store can be a key building block of a platform ecosystem and those ecosystems are what derives long term profits for everyone involved. App stores can help incubate the green shoots of a system, and as such need to be treated with care.

-- Ewan Spence, March 2009