Is Apple’s App Store mediation a good move?

Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Apple has become the “go-to guy” for all application approvals for the iPhone App Store, according to reports from Techcrunch and TUAW. But just how much benefit does Apple gain from becoming the “mediating party” on application approval in the iPhone app store?

It’s certainly an interesting tale of one application called Rising Card made by Theory11, a “strategic alliance under one goal, one mission, and one objective: to advance the art of magic.”  This application had supposedly been sitting in the approval queue for over a month (the app having been completed a month and a half ago). As of 11th August when The Unofficial Apple Weblog had reported this occurrence it was still waiting to be approved.

After the news article was published Apple’s senior VP Phil Schiller and Phil Shoemaker, Apple’s Director of Application Technology started “reaching out to the developers” according to Techcrunch.com, and subsequently got the application approved and in the iPhone App store on August 14th.

Now, this is “nice, quick and easy” good PR for Apple, after many applications including  the official provider of much of the functionality in the iPhone Google had it’s Google Voice Application rejected (which is now being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission), but just how will iPhone users really react to a “softer side” of Apple, and how long do we really expect this to continue.

When companies enter the digital age, they want certain necessities as part of their marketing, and communications arsenal, one of those is a web service called Twitter.com, a popular micro-messaging service which allows users to send 140 character updates to followers of their updates.

Now Apple has been widely criticized for not taking part in social media and not “getting it” as mentioned by Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. It is true that Apple as a company have a sterling reputation behind them (33 years to be precise), but at the same time they have undoubtedly been paying very close attention to how companies such as Jetblue and the PR on Twitter are turned around in an instant by using Twitter to update, and sort out any issues quicker then email.

If this is perhaps stage one of Apple’s acceptance of it’s mistake to not move into social media, then I think on the whole they have been slow and unresponsive. Overall the fact of the matter is they have established communication with developers of an application because of a blog post, which is quite significant for Apple.

However, I do believe relating largely to my former question at the beginning of this article that perhaps the “human side” of Apple coming out to us as it did will perhaps take many by surprise, I for one was glad to see Apple taking the wrap for it’s mistake, but wonder how much Apple is willing to give (especially, if it’s only looking for some “amazing” surge of applications being submitted in return).

On the other hand, I don’t believe that Apple is that shallow, and have certainly taken a positive move to addressing an issue which could have become an uncontrollable mess in the Twittersphere, and the blogsphere, but as I said beforehand Apple has a great relationship with it’s customers, which existed long before social media arrived.

But, what should Apple’s next move be to approaching the entire social media space, rather then just blogs?

Image Source:  Apple PR