That truly depends on frequency, and i’d rather disable a developers account than banish them. My greater concern is how to handle the user/customer base of a disabled developers account. I needs to be fair for all parties involved and sustainable. Honestly i really really want it to work well that way cause it minimizes risk and cost for the store and puts more money into the hands of the developers.
I like this idea, it has some extra overhead, but it may be worth it.
There’s some truth to it. I also feel that as SmartThings closes the gap(s) over time, there will be less and less opportunity for custom apps. The four most successful development areas so far have been:
With SmartThings 2.0, they almost closed the first two. There’s good chance that within a year the other two will be gone too.
There will always be more opportunities for writing custom device handlers than for smart apps, in my opinion, because new devices appear almost daily and SmartThings will never have enough resources to support them all. Unfortunately, publishing and selling custom device handlers is even more difficult than smart apps.
Rule builders are nice, but they are just a few steps removed from programming. Tasker and IFTTT both exist and serve very different markets for android even though they are simple rule builders at heart. There will always be a market for people who want some pre-built automations with a few steps to setup as possible. Removing friction from the process bring more customers.
Think of it this way, the ability to schedule a recording with a VCR existed for years and very few people used it. It was not until you could just click the show with a remote and set a season pass to record your favorite show that everyone started doing it. Some people don’t want to set up complicated sets of cascading rules, they just want to install a few “Smart” apps that will handle things for them.
Particularly since only 1 one Device Type Handler (per physical device model) is permitted to be published.
The vendor of that device (and/or SmartThings) has the greatest incentive to integrate and thus develop that one Handler, thus again writing off the Community developers’ profit opportunities.
I completely agree, but it could be a key to success, both microsoft and apple own part of their success to their developers. Currently, the only real rule builders are are community owned and far as partnerships go i’m actively working on behalf of smartthings to facilitate some device partnerships. I’m pretty sure i’m not the only one.
I don’t agree. I think the low hanging fruit is always picked first. Lighting and security should be a given. There are only so many ways to turn off a light or tell you when the doors are open. These are solved problems that are being adapted to fit a new market of devices.
We currently have two different rule building solutions @obycode has SmartRules and @JoeC has Simple Rule Builder
One is IOS and the other is web based and there is probably room for another on Android. A marketplace would allow discovery so that more users could find these apps. I don’t think there is a limit to the dashboards category. One size does not fit all in this area. There will never be a dashboard or interface that satisfies the needs of every user. As far as I know, no one has targeted users like @JDRoberts to make a dashboard for people with a limited range of motion in their hands.
I cannot find the SmartApp that does the TV for math for school age children, but it is a great example of a creative smart app.
All this is to say, I think there are plenty of ideas worth selling out there and no place to sell them.
That is, indeed, what SmartThings’s strategy is (was?) at launch time.
But …
That is, indeed, what is needed for SmartThings to be widely successful in the Consumer Space, and I think it will be essential for SmartThings to figure out how to implement this magic consistently, and only SmartThings is capable of doing so.
The ad hoc hodgepodge of SmartApps and mishmash of Device Types is not mass-consumer friendly.
The real test here will be what competitors manage to do successfully. We know SmartThings is blazing new trails, and I commend @sidjohn1 and the other dedicated types here who are willing to walk these uncertain trails. No risk … no gain.
But I have particular doubts about @sidjohn1’s model. A “third-party store” is a much, much different animal than the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. There are some third-party stores for Android apps, but these only succeed due to the hundreds of millions of Android devices that, by sheer quantity, make a market possible. Even official Android Apps (in Play) only a bare fraction are profitable, and most of these are by extremely large developers.
Amazon Echo. 
I know, it’s not technically a dashboard but you can’t imagine the reception this is having in the wheelchair community.
Of course, there’s diversity even there. Some people aren’t able to vocalize. And many people use a wheelchair but have excellent upper body functionality.
Choice is good. 
I think you’ve answered this with your post Terry. It’s just too small a user base for this to fly, for anybody. How many iPhones were sold before there was an App Store? How many were sold once there was an App Store. Millions and Millions. That’s a base; 150,000 is not.
@sidjohn1, I think the whole idea has merit but is way too premature to justify the effort. I certainly don’t believe that a SmartApp store is needed to grow the ST customer base. But, the customer base must be an order of magnitude larger before this would make sense. IMO. And, there is a lot that’s going to happen and change between now and a million ST customers.
You can definitely count me in, but I’ll remain free and open to donations only. I’ve thought this before, but I’m too busy at the moment to start anything on this. I was even planning to name it STUMP. SmartThings Unofficial Market Place.
You can call a series of API that’s used for IDE to achieve this, however, this won’t work over OAuth. From user perspective, this skips the hassle of them logging in to IDE to paste and publish the codes. The only downside is the codes for device types can’t be totally hidden.
Let me know what I can do to help.
@sidjohn1, personally, I think that’s good idea…As developers, we need an appstore…
There were ~3 million phones pre app store and hundreds of millions post app store. You may be right the user base may not be big enough yet. Assuming 150,000 potential customers 10% buy 1 app or device at 1$ each that leaves ~$15,000 for developers and if the store takes a 10% cut it leaves ~$1500 for the store. Yes, those numbers are pretty dismal, but it’s an excellent place to set expectations. I ovously won’t be able to quite my day job anytime soon 
, but i think there is still potential and enough buy in from developers to look deeper into this. Ultimately if smartthings says no to this it’s dead but from all the feed back it’s worth asking!
@copyninja I love the name!
It’s not a bad idea to try to grow numbers of developers first by offering them a way to gain incentives. More developers leads to maturity of the platform. Maturity of platform will grow customer base.
Even if the apps cannot be sold in a way that allows single click install, it would still benefit the developer community to have an easily searchable website with categories, ratings, contact info, etc.
I think “underground marketplace” would be more appropriate. 
I’m personally waiting for an appstore to release even more smartapps that I’ve developed. Some of the smartapps I don’t want to release to the public unless I can get a fair price for them (as those smartapps took me days and sometime months to develop and test!)
Sharing my 2 cents here from what I’ve seen so far. The folks who sign up for purchasing apps are an even combination of coding experts and novice users. However the common thread I’ve found is most of them are looking for support. It’s the convenience of support which most of them are looking for even though many times they will find alternative options in the community. Now start thinking how to manage customer service, requests, customizations, refunds, issues with ST platform/app, yes this is a biggie. 90% of the time is spent is on this one and ofcourse we all know support’s official stance on this - it’s a custom app etc. And then issues like folks installing SmartApps as SmartDevices, copy paste errors etc.
So really the focus should be around creating the experience, not just the app. I know @Ben’s loving this thread - he’s been looking for inputs for a long time. I really hope ST’s been getting it’s MarketPlace in shape but will have to deal with all of the above.
I think its a good idea. I’d be happy to contribue SmartApps to the store, and possibly even help with setting it up, dependent on me having any additional free time 
. Definitely keep me in the loop.
I too think this is a good idea. I was just thinking the same thing myself. Whether it will succeed depend on numerous factors and is incredibly risky.
I just want to add a few points briefly.
You’re joking, right?