Apple Hints At Possible App Store Redesign

The App Store has been a big hit for Apple -- in the last year, customers have downloaded 1.5 billion apps as sales of the iPhone have soared.

"The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement last week. "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up."

Still, developers whose apps aren't in the top 25 are having a hard time getting them to stand out, and Apple appears to have noticed.

In a conference call Tuesday to report Apple's quarterly earnings, Apple's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, acknowledged that the App Store has room for improvement.

He was responding to a question by Charles Wolf from Needham & Company, who asked about "a race to the bottom" for Apps prices -- many are 99 cents.

"Are you taking any steps to enable consumers to separate quality apps from the garbage?" Wolf asked.

"Charlie, we are always looking for ways to categorize Apps differently and we do have some ideas in this area," Cook replied. "As you know, today we do it by type of App and also have show popular apps and top-selling Apps, et cetera. We realize there's opportunity there for further improvement and are working on that."

Cook did say, however, that it's up to developers to set prices and that prices would likely decline a bit as the installed base for iPhones grows.

Wolf has argued that the App Store's low prices are degrading the quality of Apps and may cause developers to turn away if they can't make enough money creating Apps.

The App Store's competition is small so far, but it does exist. On the call, Cook estimated that RIM and Nokia each offer between 1,000 and 2,000 apps, while Google's Android has less than 5,000.

Registration is now open for the leading enterprise communications event, VoiceCon. It happens in San Francisco, Nov. 2-5. Find out more and register.