(I’ve been working on a similar piece.)

I know. I know. “Cry me a river”, but the fundamental issue in question here is whether the App Store is a viable marketplace for independent software development, not just yours and mine.

It seems like around the first year anniversary of the App Store there’s been a shift to the point where independent app developers can’t generate enough self-promotion to break through.

I’ve seen many articles that talk about the thriving market of quality apps with deep features and higher prices rather than the iTunes-promoted hit parade. e.g. http://www.marco.org/208454730 But all of the examples sited seem to be apps or devs that were on the App Store in its first 6 to 9 months or have gotten significant marketing help from Apple by being featured in one of the App Store lists or promotions. And even those that are featured have seen significant price erosion.

The game has fundamentally changed in the last 6 to 9 months. There were 32 pages of music apps (my category) in February 2009. Today there are 200 pages. That’s a 6 fold increase in the size of the marketplace in 10 months!

Up through about May 2009 pretty much all new apps in the category had a shot at entering the Top-100 chart based on the initial sales bump from being a new release. That is no longer the case. In most categories in the US App Store the Top-100-list has taken over the function of Top-20-list from a year ago. But there’s now no list performing the function of last year’s Top-100-list. So there’s nothing feeding the top list except Apple features and marketing and whatever the developer can generate.

The odd thing about the App Store unlike, for example, Amazon is that the App Store seems to have no “long tail”.

I would love to see some counter examples, but I’m not finding them.