(PalatePress) - This is my third year writing about wine iPhone apps for Palate Press and VinTank. You would have thought last year’s version would have been the hardest when we analyzed over 450 apps for 20 key factors. In fact, it was the apocalyptic remnants of the category we saw this year that really pained us. What happened? Why are wine iPhone apps not succeeding when other niche apps like Foodspotting are doing so well? I needed to understand and have spent the last four months analyzing the challenges. Over the last year and a half we have seen the most tragic case of inertia for this segment of wine apps, with many going out of business, others atrophying in the App Store, and most of the stars stagnating and wasting screen space on our iPhones. We watched as apps shot into the scene (Crushd) only to quickly burn out. We have seen apps that gained the attention of mainstream wineries (Blush) but never answer requests from a few major wineries to do something to accept revenue.