This is then, no surprise that lots of services and companies are trying to solve that issue. We wanted to map those players and although Appsfire has not really started implementing what we are planning (this is called a teaser - more on that later), we also find ourselves in that map. 

There it is (click to zoom). Note we put aside the App store/Google and the blogosphere/TwitterSphere that plays an important part too. We focused here only on services that specifically aim at solving the discovery of mobile apps for the iPhone

What we can learn from this map is that the attention of iPhone users is split between many sorts of discovery opportunities from the most traditional (app catalogs like AppStore HQ) to the most complex (Flurry is an example), from personal initiatives (like appstore-appstot.com) to funded startups (a bunch in our map). And none has really taken the lead to mainstream although some have reached a decent size already (like AppstoreHQ)

App discovery is far from being solved. All those players, Apple included and soon many more players like Google/Android, Mobile operators, probably some publishers, will try to bring their own solution. This is a very hard problem to solve correctly. We tried ourselves with a few discovery mechanisms from which we learned a lot and gave us the vision for our next steps.

One more thing to mention is that the discovery of Apps for many users does not take place online. It takes place offline, while discussing and comparing apps with friends. Apps are the new playlists and the new mobile glue. People like to talk about them in real life. If you have an iPhone you know what we mean. And this part cannot be underestimated

This is definitely a hot space and one that requires monitoring.