Last week, among other news about the upcoming release of iOS 7, Apple announced the launch of a new category in the App Store, specifically designed for children.
According to Apple, the new category should “highlight the best children’s apps for every age,” thereby giving parents the opportunity to choose an app that matches their child’s age. It is not yet known how the selection for the “children’s” category will be carried out (will Apple or the developer have the last word?).
There is an opinion that something like a “safe zone” may appear on the App Store for the youngest users of gaming applications. “Now parents and teachers will be able to quickly find apps that are best suited for children,” the company’s website says.Dmitry Zhelnin, owner of 65 Gb Software (Rabbit at Home, Emma’s Fashion Show), in an interview with us noted that at the moment “the demand for children’s content is more than stable.”
Moreover, according to him, the supply for them is “growing at the first cosmic speed.”
Rabbit at HomeHowever, this market has its own difficulties.
“They earn individual titles here,” Dmitry said. — In the mass, developers have to sit down five hundred times to at least go to zero with a children’s application.”
We have already written in detail about the reasons for this. One of the main ones, we recall, boils down to the fact that children are an insolvent audience. It is very difficult to monetize such applications. Another problem is the low usability in the App Store as a whole. Children’s applications have a hard time in an oversaturated store.
The appearance of a new category will improve the visibility of such programs, which means it will bring new users.
“We vote with both hands for everything that will help organize all the children’s content of the store and bring it out of a semi-peripheral state. The need has been overdue for a long time, any parent will confirm this — the App Store search leaves much to be desired, and children demand new things every day,” Dmitry said.
Emma’s Fashion ShowWhether this will affect the revenue of children’s apps is difficult to say.
In addition, after the investigation conducted by the UK Antimonopoly Authority and a number of scandals, which we have written about in detail, it is quite possible that purchases inside children’s apps will be preceded by a message containing a serious warning. If, of course, such purchases will be allowed in the “children’s” category of apps at all.
These factors may well seriously negate all the advantages of innovation. However, 65 Gb Software’s forecasts regarding the future of the children’s mobile market are “moderately optimistic,” Dmitry stressed.