The future of App Stores

As a iOS developer, I have been asking myself what kind of change the App Store is bringing about.
The Apple App Store has been undoubtedly at the center of much debate and analysis since its birth and much has been said about it being a revolution in software distribution. Most recently, the path chosen by Apple for Lion, which will be downloadable from the Mac App Store, does confirm that, from the user viewpoint, the App Store is indeed a revolution.

But what about the developers’ viewpoint?

Saying that it is a revolution as well is pretty easy. We all know that the App Store creates a distribution channel, with its constraints and its benefits, that enables entirely new business models for ISVs, and that many developers have had success in implementing one of them. So, this is not under question. Anyhow, I feel that this is kind of a retrospective sight to what the App Store has already made possible. My real wonder, though, is where the App Store revolution will lead to. How will software distribution change once the number of “Application Stores” grows, as it is already doing? How will application stores change in order to face the challenge of the huge numbers of app they will host?

Admittedly, this is not an urgent matter, we need simply waiting for this question to get an answer, and we know that the answer is unpredictable; but I find myself often thinking about a scenario where the app stores eventually play the same roles ado publishers do in the book market. There could be general publishers and specialized publishers, like Cydia is already at this time;
there could be publishers more strictly filtering the quality or content of what they publish, others more “liberal”; publishers charging a higher or lower fee for admittance; publishers asking for exclusivity on some titles, and so on.
For us developers, this could mean that we could need learning to actively look for one publisher for our apps, and to be prepared for this task being so difficult as it now is to have a book published by a publishing house. Gone would be the times when an app rejection could raise critical voices and be experienced as an unilateral act of minor censorship.

I know perfectly well that the current metaphor for the app stores could be that of bookstores, more aptly than that of publishing houses. And indeed, future is unknown, so it could head towards a completely different picture, but still I like fancying about it.