I think the particular problem with the app store is that popularity and success is a simple game with simple rules, set by one entity, with their own interests in the game as well.

So, marketing iPhone apps boils down to largely gaming the appstore system, via pricing, and in some cases versions of keyword stuffing and so on.

Enabling downloading and purchasing outside the appstore would open up a whole new set of rules to the game, and doubtless different winners and losers.

Apple if course wouldn’t get as much of their application tax, which is becoming potentially quite lucrative, so that is a big impediment to seeing that sort of change.

Ultimately the question remains – is their a viable long term business in selling software? Or is the plummeting iPhone app average price simply the future of the software industry in fast forward?

I think the “is a free market” argument is that if you don’t like how Apple runs things you move to a different platform. However, as someone who doesn’t own a cell phone (nor intend to own one in the foreseeable future), I really couldn’t care less about the whingeing of iPhone developers.

The whiney segment of the Apple sharecroppers are asking for raised barriers to entry and other things that would make it easier for them to make money and support themselves as well paid software craftsmen living in the US. That is, they *want* a less free market, as long as the playing field is tilted towards them and away from cheap, disposable ‘joke’ apps.

It’s the commenters who are saying that the free market effect is reducing the developer profits, just as it encourages outsourcing of software to low wage regions like eastern europe, and (as the theory suggests) generally this is a good thing for consumers, so deal with it and stop whining.

The more sophisticated argument is that without these regulations then quality software will suffer and everyone will be left poorer. It’s a kind of protectionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism).