As I read here and here about the various examples of iPhone apps in the App Store today, it first occurred to me in a true case of web 2.0 warped thinking that people might not be willing to pay for the apps. But when I noticed that the majority of the apps cost between $0.99 and 9.99, I recognised the app store for what it was - yet another genius idea from Apple.

To understand the genius of the idea, consider Facebook and its application platform - specifically the fact that Facebook is having trouble monetising Facebook as a whole and the difficulty Facebook application developers are having in making money from their apps.

Now what if Facebook had enabled apps to be sold for $0.99 per install? For one thing I think users would install fewer frivolous apps and only useful apps would get bought. This would in turn mean less spam notifications to friends and perhaps there wouldn’t be so much talk of Facebook app fatigue. Developers would of course have a clear means of monetisation as would Facebook itself by charging a commission on each purchase. Facebook would also have the useful apps it hoped but has failed to achieve by launching the platform in the first place.

Back to Apple and the iPhone. I don’t expect to win any awards for predicting that the App Store will be a great success and Apple will make a ton of money from it. I also predict however that Apple will do a better job than Facebook of having useful and serious utility apps built on its platform.