iOS App Store Gains New 'Shopping' Category

Apple will be updating the iOS App Store today to introduce a new Shopping category that will allow iOS users to better find shopping-related apps. According to TechCrunch the Shopping category will be available to users worldwide and will encompass apps that offer shopping, auctions, price comparisons, coupons, product reviews, and more, transitioning them from the existing Lifestyle category to the new less noisy category.

Apple plans to use the Shopping category to highlight apps that support Apple Pay, its mobile payments service. Many apps now include Apple Pay integration, letting users pay for merchandise with a finger on the Touch ID fingerprint button on supported devices.

iosappstoreshoppingcategory
The new App Store category will include launch with several different collections of shopping apps, including a "Save While You Shop" category that will be offering exclusive discounts from a variety of merchants like Everlane, Zappos, Groupon, and Nordstrom. Nordstrom, for example, will offer a free gift when $100 or more is spent in the app, while Zappos will offer free 1-day shipping.

App Store users should begin seeing the category in the App Store later today, and in the future, it's possible Apple could expand it to the tvOS App Store as well. The tvOS App Store currently only supports two categories, Games and Entertainment, but shopping on the big screen has been a feature that's been touted by Apple.

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Top Rated Comments

thogin Avatar
126 months ago
The Apple employee in charge of adding the categories has to manually add them one at a time using the Apple TV remote touchpad, that's why it's taking so long. :)
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Benjamin Frost Avatar
126 months ago
This is welcome news.

Shopping apps tend to get lumped into Lifestyle, along with everything else. Now, let's have another 13 subcategories to accommodate other apps. I'm tired of wading through a sea of apps to get to the one I'm looking for.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
diego Avatar
126 months ago
The app store ecosystem needs to be overhauled. There's so much garbage in there that it's impossible to find the ones that are actually useful. It's so frustrating to go in the App Store and just seeing stupid casual games and flashy apps that actually don't do anything to improve people's lives... we live in a world ruled by easy and fast entertainment.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dk001 Avatar
126 months ago
This is welcome news.

Shopping apps tend to get lumped into Lifestyle, along with everything else. Now, let's have another 13 subcategories to accommodate other apps. I'm tired of wading through a sea of apps to get to the one I'm looking for.
Be great if,if Apple would fix search in the app store.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Romy90210 Avatar
126 months ago
Yet they can't add a proper way to search for (Unfeatured) apps or useful set of categories to their new apple tv. or is that somethinng they are savign for the atv5... apple store categories.... smh
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nfl46 Avatar
126 months ago
Dang, about time! Just in time for Black Friday shopping. Clever.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)