Five evolution paths for the iPhone

3. Making sense of the App Store clutter

Apple clearly sees 50,000 applications on the App Store as a big selling point for iPhone and iPod touch. It certainly offers plenty of choice, but while the biggest and best apps manage to cut through the clutter, a lot of gems get buried in the murk.

With Apple's iPhone marketing placing huge emphasis on the App Store – 'There's an app for that!' – the company must develop new and better ways to sort through the tens of thousands of available applications.

That doesn't just mean recommending the best apps to iPhone users, it means recommending the apps that they might like best: personalisation. Nokia has already grasped the nettle, promising to offer recommendations based on social location to users of its Ovi Store – although the reliability of its system has yet to be proven.

Apple’s Genius recommendation tool for music shows its existing interest in this area, but the company needs to develop something similar for iPhone apps to ensure developers maintain their interest in its device.

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