Apple just wrapped up the keynote address at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) here in San Francisco.
Although the WWDC keynote is directed primarily at developers, it can be important for iOS publishers and mobile advertisers: It provides insight into Apple's thinking, its software development road map, and future plans regarding how the iPhone will evolve.
Mobile app publishers and advertisers will want to know about the following new features announced by Apple.
Apple Improves App Discoverability in the App Store
The most significant announcement for app publishers and advertisers were updates made to the iTunes App Store. There will now be an Explore tab, with trending searches, faster search, related searches, editors picks, and discounted bundles. Users will now be able to more easily discover new apps; they will have multiple ways of finding exactly the app they are looking for.
Trending searches, which will most likely be modeled after the Twitter trending function, will show popular searches; it will also help people find apps related to a specific topic.
Discounted Bundles is an interesting new feature. It's something that game developers have requested for some time. This feature will let a developer package up multiple apps into a single bundle, and offer the entire package at a discount. Imagine an Angry Birds bundle that contains all the best versions of that game, or an EA Sports bundle that has all its most popular sports games in one easy-to-buy package.
App Previews is a new feature that will allow a developer to upload a video trailer to demo the app. It's a great way to promote an app and show off its unique functionality.
Extensions for Apps, Including Shazam With Siri
iOS 8 will now allow apps to communicate more easily with each other. That ability is best demonstrated with Shazam and Siri: Siri can now communicate directly with Shazam and launch that app, making it easy to identify songs through Siri when someone is driving. That same system can be used by advertisers who want to access Siri from a mobile advertisement.
Third-party extensions can now be developed for Safari or other apps, making it easy for apps such as Pinterest to provide the ability to Pin an image directly from a mobile browser. It also means many popular third-party extension from PC Web browsers will be ported over to iOS.
Plan This Summer for the iOS 8 Launch in Fall
App teams will want to plan this summer, determining how to best incorporate those new features into their app marketing. By incorporating them, the teams that do so will gain a first-mover advantage when iOS 8 is made publicly available in the fall.
