Apple, a global company have missed the point.
The Appstore, a unified single point of sale for all iPhone Apps isn’t global, or unified. Did you know that a review for an app is only visible in your own country?
Did you know that although all revenue goes direct to Apple in America, when paying developers they seperate every country into a seperate revenue stream and only pay out when its greater than $250 value?
Some devs may never see their sales even though they make $1000, because its spread accross the world.
I was unaware of bad reviews for my App, because they were in the American app store only. How does that help me improve the app to fix the issues raised when I never saw them.
Also, reviews can be nothing more than slander and the dev can do nothing about it. I have a bad review complaining that the accelerometer doesnt work and the user can’t play the game. The first line of my Instructions page says “Swipe the screen to move”. Its not an accelerometer game and Yet, People will see this bad review and think, “Hmm, I wont buy that if the controls dont work.”. So a single moron has ruined my sales because he is too stupid to read the instructions.
In essence, the Customers are being hurt because feedback via reviews is being missed 90% of the time as the Developer is native to another Country.
The Developers are being hurt by poor reviews they can’t see or do anything about. They may not even get paid for their sales in a region because its less than $250 equivelent.
Updates are taking weeks, two or three in cases. Bugs fixed in minutes can ruin sales as users complain for a month while the dev waits for Apple to approve an update. When the update goes through, the review complaining about the bugs sits there and the Developer can’t have it removed, so potential sales are lost because new customers think the bugs are still there.
Apple didnt even tell us how many we were selling for the first, and most crucial three weeks!
Apple, the AppStore is a total mess. Please fix it.