Apple’s Phil Schiller, the senior vice of Worldwide Marketing and the person over the App Stores, isn’t waiting for Monday to announce some changes to the App Store. In an interview with The Verge, Schiller outlined a number of changes that will be coming out soon.
First, Apple will start allowing ad placement in App Store search results — in other words, they’ll be setting up an ad auction system that’s fair to both large development firms and indie developers. Paid search results are the norm for search engines like Google, so it’s not surprising that Apple would look at this method to give developers a way to advertise their apps in App Store searches. The image at right is courtesy of The Loop and shows an ad at the top of search results for “camera filters”.
Next, Featured apps will no longer be promoted by the App Store once you’ve installed them. That’s a minor change, but a welcome one.
iPhones that have 3D Touch (currently the iPhone 6s series) will have a way to share App Store apps with others from the Home screen. My guess is that you’re not actually sharing an app with another person, but simply sending an App Store link to that person for an app you have installed.
Schiller brought up the new faster app review process, noting that half of all submissions are now approved within 24 hours and 90 percent with 48 hours.
Finally, Apple wants developers to grow their revenues through subscription-based models and will open auto-renewable subscriptions to all app categories. As part of this, Apple will maintain its 70/30 revenue share for one year, then raise the amount to 85/15 once a customer has kept a subscription active for one year. That new revenue split starts on June 13, 2016 for app makers who already have subscribers retained for a year.
