Ready for sprawling aisles of Microsoft stuff, a guru bar, and giant wall-sized screens? The first store in Scottsdale, Arizona is receiving its final touches, and may open on, or just after Oct 22, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It's uncanny. When known software gets repackaged for iPhones and iPod Touches and passes through the hallowed gates of the App Store, something happens: Almost invariably, it gets cheaper. Waaay cheaper. Good right? Well, not always.

The App Store is a strange new place for developers. Veterans and newcomers engage in bareknuckle combat, driving prices down to levels people wouldn't have imagined charging just a few years ago. Margins drop to razor-thin levels while customers expect apps to get cheaper and cheaper, but with ever increasing quality and depth.

For developers, for other software platforms and potentially for the increasingly fickle customers themselves, it's uncharted, and treacherous, territory. But the most bizarre thing of all is—in an effort to keep people in the App Store, and to prevent competitors from getting a toehold in the mobile app business—Apple's charting a course straight into it.
"The App Store is a very competitive environment," says Caroline Hu Flexer, co-founder of Duck Duck Moose, an indie developer of children's edutainment apps like Itsy Bitsy Spider. "As an independent developer without a large PR budget or well-known brands, it can be very challenging, and you're pretty much at the mercy of Apple." More...