Global Intelligence Alliance Group has just released an analysis of several app stores for mobile applications.  By this time we are all very familiar with the iPhone App Store, and the fact we are so familiar with it is pretty amazing.  It was launched only eight months ago, but currently boasts over 15,000 applications and surpassed 500 million downloads back in January of this year.  About all you can say is “Wow!”  But since that isn’t very enlightening, I’ll try to provide some observations on app stores in general. 

First of all it’s important to remember that only two app stores actually exist.  These are the iPhone App Store and the Android Marketplace.  All the others you may have heard about like Ovi from Nokia, Skymarket from Microsoft, BlackBerry Apps Storefront, and the webOS Software Store from Palm are all just announcements right now.  That’s right.  You can buy any software you want from an app store as long as your smartphone is an iPhone or the G1 phone.  That’s it.  There are not any other choices right now today.

So why all the noise about what are essentially download sites for only two devices?  Because until the iPhone App Store, if you wanted a mobile application for your smartphone, you had to either go through a carrier storefront (which tend to be limited and difficult to navigate) or hunt around the Internet for software to download from sites that may or may not be legitimate.  So being able to go one trusted place for software for your device is a big deal.  Add to that the fact that one of the devices has sold like no other mobile device before and you see why app stores are getting so much press.

But for all the positive press, and it is certainly well-deserved positive press, there are still some issues that need to be addressed to really free users.  In no particular order some of the biggest issues are:

1. Searching has to be improved – In some cases even if you know the name of the application it can be difficult to find in the iPhone App Store.  This problem will only get worse as the number of applications grows, and as business applications begin to populate the store.
2. Many more devices must be supported – With the announcement of several new app stores this problem should improve over time.  I still wonder how useful it will be if you are a small business and have to go to the iPhone App Store for one person, the BlackBerry Apps Storefront for another, and the webOS Software Store for another.  That’s not a very effective way for a small business user to find what they need for their business.  And that brings me to the third point.
3. Business applications have to be supported – Right now all of the app stores that exist, and the ones that are coming all cater to consumer applications.  There is nothing wrong with providing consumer applications, but who is going to provide applications for small and medium business personnel?  After all, there are over 120,000,000 of them in the US alone.

We are early on in this new world of app stores, and we are off to a great start.  But to really unlock the potential of mobility for business users, the app store landscape will need to change to address these and other issues.