Apple launches ‘Shopping’ category on App Store

Apple has announced that it is launching Shopping as a category to its App Store. The company was long rumored to be working on a Shopping category for App Store, but had not confirmed anything about it. It has today released the Shopping category to help consumers better locate mobile shopping applications. The feature is available for Apple users worldwide, who can now check this category to look for all sort of shopping related applications on iOS store.

The Shopping category will feature apps from multiple verticals and channels, including price comparison, product reviews and more. It will broadly include apps that help shoppers in finding deals, discounts and coupons, be abreast with the latest trends, read product details, find price of products and more. On the launch of the new category, Apple has featured collections of deals and themes for shopping apps, which include Save While You Shop for deals and discounts, Shop for Everything to offer options across a variety of themes like Gifts, Groceries, and more. This theme based grouping will not only make it simple for users to find the right app, but will also allow a variety of apps to get on to the top position.

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Basically, the company has segregated such apps from the Lifestyle category on App Store in order to make it easier for users to find out shopping related apps in particular. Earlier these apps were featured under Lifestyle section, which was already cluttered with dating app, real estate apps, wedding apps, and more, which made it difficult for user to find the right app for shopping.

This category will also help retail players and mobile shopping services to become more visible by getting featured in their own section. This will significantly increase discoverability, downloads, and sales for App Store developers, and players like Amazon, Walmart and more. In addition to that, it will make the Lifestyle app also less clutter.

The new Shopping category will put Apple Pay enabled apps in spotlight. Apple Pay is the company's mobile payments technology which lets iPhone owners shop at NFC-based payment terminals by using their credit and debit cards details stored on mobile wallet.