As you can guess, I’m an heavy user of the AppStore: I love to discover new released apps, read the changelog of every app that gets an update, share apps with my friends. But, the AppStore is not perfect: many bloggers wrote about the problems the Store has but the biggest, in my opinion, lies in the core itself: discover new apps is difficult.
With more than 100.000 apps available and the new rules Apple rolled out last week, it’s become impossible to find fresh and interesting apps. Seems like only top grossing apps get to the front page.
Anyway, I think a solution to this has just been released. And it’s called App Popular.
App Popular is an application which helps you discover and keep track of iPhone apps. The concept is pretty simple: you can find out which apps are selling the most in all the countries where the AppStore is available, track them, share them with your friends. Now, I would like to quote App Popular official website:
“Curious which games are big in Egypt? Which book is popular in Macau? Or what the go to social networking tool is in Qatar?
Perhaps you’re developing a new app and need to do some international market research. Or maybe you just need to keep your eyes on the competition?
App Popular™ offers an elegant and clean visual design that lets you very quickly browse the App Store’s top 100 free and paid applications by any country and category.
Redefine your app world when you explore all 77 App Stores across the planet!”
Now, what the developers say to introduce the app is quite interesting, and I must admit I didn’t thought of it. Let’s say you’re a developer and you need to know which categories sell most in which country: this app is aimed at you. Sure, there’s iTunes, but you know, you’d have to manually change your country everytime while App Popular lets you check every country with a single tap.
Moreover, if your application is already out in the App Store, you can easily track its popularity with App Popular. Sure, it’s not a sales management / report tool, but I’ve never seen something like this on the iPhone before.
You can add applications to a “tracking list”, watch a stream of applications and share apps with your friends via email, Twitter or Facebook.
App Popular has a nice interface as well: the icons are very iPhone-style, the red curtain is simply awesome. I wish the developers will implement a Coverflow-like horizontal scrolling though, ‘cause by now you have to tap on the icons to move left / right. It’s not a big drawback, anyway.
In conclusion, App Popular is a rather specific app. It’s aimed at developers, bloggers and people who purchase a lot of apps and are actually interested in discovering new apps. That said, App Popular is a must-have.
It’s available at $1.99 in the AppStore.
