iOS 7 Will Level the Playing Field For App Store Developers, New Developers Stand A Chance
One of the first developers at Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, Marco Arment, believes that Apple’s next mobile operating system, iOS 7, is going to wipe out thousands of app developers currently making apps for the App Store and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Arment explains his theory in a post on his blog, saying that the new version of iOS is like a force of nature:
“Like a forest fire, clearing out the old is very destructive and shouldn’t be taken lightly. But what’s left behind is a clean slate and immense opportunity,” he writes.
According to Arment, long time app developers in the App Store have only been able to maintain their position by incrementally improving their apps as iOS updates provided them new features to add and new options for user interfaces.
“iOS 7 is different,” he writes. “It isn’t just a new skin: it introduces entirely new navigational and structural standards far beyond the extent of any previous UI changes. Existing apps can support iOS 7 fairly easily without looking broken, but they’ll look and feel ancient.”
This is where new developers can swoop in with a heavy advantage. New developers won’t be married to previous versions, as devs need to support users who purchased their apps on older devices that don’t support all the new features available in iOS 7. Even if current developers wish to modernize their apps, they will have to dedicate valuable resources to maintain their existing customer base, and this will allow new devs to catch an advantage.
In Arment’s perspective, “This big of an opportunity doesn’t come often — we’re lucky to see one every 3–5 years. Anyone can march right into an established category with a huge advantage if they have the audacity to be exclusively modern.”
