Om Malik looks at data about the Apple App Store from an analyst. The conclusions, in list form:
- Video games continue to dominate the App Store charts and drive the vast majority of App Store revenue (est. 75%+) for AAP
- Similar to the last two years, non-gaming apps remain under-represented at the top of the charts, with just one of the top 10 grossing apps, two of the top 20, four of the top 30, and five of the top 40 in the App Store for 2014
- The App Store alone reached nearly $10 billion in sales in FY 2013 and we think that this can grow to nearly $20 billion by FY 2015
- Net App Store revenues to pass gross iTunes revenues in dollar terms (both as-reported) in the second half of FY 2015.
- Of the $1 in App Store sales, 24 cents is operating income while remaining 6 cents are spread across operational expenses and costs-of-goods-sold.
Looks good right? Growth, growth, growth.
It looks good when you’re Apple, but when you look at this from the perspective of the user, a different picture emerges. Of the top 50 ‘applications’ in the App Store, virtually all of them are games. Of those games, virtually all are “freemium”, the semi-scummy or outright scummy pay-to-win games we all despise (the one exception: Minecraft). Actual applications are virtually nowhere to be found in the top lists. Accordingly, the vast majority of revenue – more than 75%, this analyst claims – goes to game companies, not application developers.
This isn’t an ‘Appy Apple’ – it’s a ‘scummy freemium Apple’.
And before the usual people blame me of being anti-Apple again because they have nothing better to do: I’m pretty sure the exact same trends apply to the Play Store – just with far lower revenue numbers.
The application store model is working out great for a few large players and Apple/Google, but as an independent developer, the odds of making it big in either the Android or iOS application store are very slim; in fact, the few large players are so dominant that your work will most likely never bubble to the surface of the ocean filled with freemium crap.
This is further highlighted by the countless stories of whining users on both the iOS and Android side whenever a developer decides to charge for an update or add-on to an existing application. We know the story of Monument Valley, a beautifully crafted mobile game that drew ire from cheapskates because the developers dared to charge a few bucks for an expansion pack to the game that nearly doubled the original game’s content. More recently, Android developer Chris Lacey faced similar criticisms (see the comments here and in other places) when he charged a few bucks for a ground-up rewrite of his Android launcher.
This is what the application store model has done to development. Because large companies can release seemingly “free” games and applications, stupid people expect every mobile game and application to be free. Apple (and Google) have instigated a race to the bottom, massively devaluing the work of developers. The developers of Monument Valley as well as Chris Lacey have put a lot of hard work in their game and application, yet people expect it to be free, and are enraged when they are confronted with the fact that developers need to eat too, and that games and applications do not just magically materialise out of the the æther. While sipping their triple-a-day 8 dollar ‘coffee’, of course.
I have never made a secret out of my dislike of the application store model, exactly because of what it does to independent developers. It devalues their work, and independent, small development houses will simply be unable to survive in this race to the bottom. The end result? Apple and a few large companies win, but independent developers and users lose.
Well, unless you like the virtual equivalent of slot machines.
I suspect Apple is as surprised as anyone for the behavior of customers in the App Store. Apple knows the value of their software and charges a premium for it. An cheap throw away experience cluttered with adds and constant annoying buy in seems philosophically opposed to the “Apple experience.” This is terrible. Good software is hard to make and deserves to be paid for. But there does seem a terrible race to the bottom, for higher quality software, even Miceosoft has even put Office on iPad free (or Get). But also OS, with Android, windows phone, and even windows itself free. Theee has been an idea that everything should be free on the Internet, movies, music, books and software have been devalued fueled by piracy and philosophy. I don’t think app stores make this, they make the devaluation obvious. I think the answer is not get rid of app stores, which may actually be the best way to actually get money to developers. But change the recomendation algorithm. Push quality. Facebook and google have shown us buy changing the algorithm you change what people do. Make an App Store a place where high quality flourishes and is not buried by the sea of low quality freemium applications and games.
Also, weed out cheaters who pay marketting companies for false reviews in the first week end subsequently always remain in the top 3 spots (the downloads in the first week have a great impact)
Remove the reviews of 2 year olds versions that don’t have anything to do anymore with the current version
Forbid users who haven’t used/managed to set up an app, to score an App…
Don’t compute the keywords for an App from the App title : use a custom field set by the developper for that
The wrongs of the ranking algorithm/play app store are so numerous…. :/
Edited 2014-12-15 16:13 UTC
Welcome to true economics 101.
1. consumers want as much as they can get for as little expense as possible.
2. producers wants as much payment as possible from as little effort as possible.
3. consumers and producers are two roles held by the same people at different moments.
Then you throw social psychology into the mix, and it all goes non-euclidean…
Gist of it is that people don’t know the effort involved in producing the initial copy of the app. At best they know the effort involved in producing copy n+1 (a couple of clicks and the computer does the rest).
The packaged software economy was an artifact of the limits of distribution, on par with the book and LP/tape/CD. What people were interesting in was what stored on the medium, but because it was physically bound to the medium the seller could demonstrate limited availability etc (limited number of items on the shelf and all that).
As an app developer I recently changed direction. I am not only developing apps for my own account but I am also developing apps for others, who pay me. Currenlty I am developing an app for the Eurpean Commission. This makes a living. The app will be free to use for the public, so I don’t get additional revenue when the app is used a lot, but on the other hand it has a high visibility. As such I’m getting attention from other business and I am even considering to hire other app developers to make apps for 3rd parties.
In other words your work “profile” is shifting from being a author to being a carpenter.
I ran into something the other day about the return of patronage. Look at Kickstarter and how it is being used to fund game development. Now consider something similar being done for music or other copyrighted works.
I have backed the creation of a classical music album on kickstarter by the fellow the makes the music for the Elder Scrolls games.
https://www.facebook.com/NorthernerSymphony?ref=hl
Onto the topic at hand I prefer to pay for applications and usually dismiss free applications out of hand.
I do not want advertising spoiling the experience.
The poor search capabilities of the App store means I usually use a google search to find candidates that I might want.
“The developers of Monument Valley as well as Chris Lacey have put a lot of hard work in their game and application, yet people expect it to be free”
Many people may expect it to be free and they are the one complaining (which is indeed a pity), but the article is about the App Store making billions in revenue and growing fast which means that some users agree to pay for apps. I am one of them and not alone for sure.
The fact is that the App Store model has open the door on a huge potential user base for many individual developers to create an app with the hope to make some money and most won’t even pay their development cost (I know that: I have my own app).
But the App Store is not any different than the traditional software distribution model on that point, except that in this case, individual developers don’t even know how to distribute their app and thus don’t even try.
Woosh.
Really?
“the few large players are so dominant that your work will most likely never bubble to the surface of the ocean filled with freemium crap.”
…
“We know the story of Monument Valley”
I know that before Monument Valley became a huge success as a mobile app, ustwo was not a dominant player. Neither was Servo LLC (Threes), Marco Arment (Instapaper), FiftyThree (Paper), Flipboard and many, many more.
Now, if you expect independent developers to make tens of millions through the app store, then you are right: the mobile app model is not a place to become rich overnight just because you have spent months developing a nice app in your garage. I didn’t know that the situation was easier for them in the traditional software distribution model however.
No, this is what cheap-ass end users who don’t want to pay for anything has done to development. If the app stores didn’t exist, these freemium games would exist *somewhere*, and that’s where these people would be.
For those of us who don’t mind paying for quality software, I think there should exist (if it doesn’t already) a curated directory listing with only the best stuff listed, with links back to their respective app stores.
I would absolutely love it if finding non-freemium/non-advertising-based apps were easier to find. Every single time I search for something on the Play Store all the top results are crappy bullshit pretending to be free and it just irritates me a lot. I don’t mind paying for quality apps and I use several paid-for apps on my phone on a daily basis, I just hope there will always be some developers willing to fulfill my needs and not succumb to the freemium-trend
Exactly. I would be so awesome if Google/Apple implemented additional listings without all the freemium stuff that would promote the actual BEST applications, NOT the most popular or the ones from large companies that pay to be listed at the top.
Well, not only Google and Apple, but one for EVERY platform. Sites like Lifehacker do this somewhat with their ‘Top 5’ listings, but they’re always way too biased in favor of the free offerings. Granted, sometimes the free apps are better than the paid ones, but not always.
Because of how Apps are ranked, a developer who wants to make money has to go the fremium way (free download with inApp purchases) :
A free App gets 100000+ downloads in a few months
A 1€ App gets 700 downloads in 2~3 years
-> paid Apps gets burried in the ranking system
only free Apps get exposure
Yes, I know that. I can still hope, can’t I?
On iOS, there is two classifications for each category: one for free apps and one for paid apps. You even have a list for top grossing apps!
Paid apps are not buried by free apps.
The problem is that many people just want everything to be free and they don’t even consider paying anything for an app, whether it is directly or as an in-app purchase.
The problem is not in the app store model, it is with people’s expectation. Freemium model is a consequence, not the cause of this race to the bottom.
Not true. Even browsing the paid apps these days shows mostly apps with in-app purchases. Try to find a way to exclude all apps with in-app purchases. That’s the problem, not free vs. non-free.
For a company that got started as being the best search provider, finding stuff in the Play Store is a downright mess.
News Flash, the wages of the lower 70% have been stagnant and even going backwards for the better part of 40 years and there is more sources of free entertainment than ever before so why EXACTLY should the user care?
Lets face it developers, thanks to digital ending physical scarcity and the requirement to go through a traditional gatekeeper like the movie/record/game publishers the consumer is literally up to their eyeballs in entertainment choices and mobile? Its disposable, sorry but it is. I can fire up DOSBox and play games I bought 20 years ago, if I don’t want to fiddle with it I can throw GOG a couple bucks and have it all neatly packaged and “clicky clicky” simple. How many apps written for Android 1 will work on Android 5? How many will even give enough of a shit to find out?
I’m sorry if you bought the bullshit Apple and Google was shoveling but you are writing disposable programs for disposable devices that are competing not only with other disposable media but with non disposable as well, no shit that the majority won’t get anything because it simply isn’t worth anything to the consumers.
I can listen to 100% non pirated free music in any genre I like for 24/7 and never run out, YouTube has more 100% free entertaining video than I could ever watch, hell even in my favorite gaming genres of triple A shooters and sandbox titles $50 split between Steam sales and Humble Bundles has caused me to end up with so many titles I have games bought nearly 2 years ago I haven’t even fired up yet, so why should I care to spend money on some mobile app that will get tossed when I toss the phone if not sooner?
Sorry, but YOU are not the target audience anymore. We don’t care about you because you’re too old and we realize you’re not going to spend money because you’re satisfied with all your old stuff.
Young people (teens and tweens) are our target audience. They’re the ones who spend money on impulse and who can be easily convinced to spend money based on marketing and sales hype.
You are irrelevant to the modern digital economy. We get it and stopped talking to you years ago … when will you get it?
You’ll find critics of you actions everywhere on the internet, they shouldn’t automatically be accepted as gospel truth. What really matters to app developers, are the things that really matter to companies anywhere: what are their revenues?
Before the app stores, were any of them making any money on apps?
What will be the effect of Lacy’s charging for updates? will he make less money than he would have for just giving a free update?
Of course Apple and Microsoft’s app stores for Desktops are a different situation where there were application developers making a good amount of money before they existed. Comparing/contrasting those revenues would also be interesting. I’d expect them to be lower in the app store ( largely due to the %30 cut apple & MS would take).
Tomi Ahonen has written a detailed article why App Stores cannot sustain most developers:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2014/08/the-comprehens…
Also, nobody should act surprised when free(mium) apps rule the app charts. The perceived difference between “free” and “$1” is much, MUCH bigger than, say, between “$1” and “$10”. This is just basic psychology at work.
http://www.macdrifter.com/2013/05/the-psychology-of-app-pricing.htm…
(And BTW this is why people buy $5 coffee at Starbucks or go to expensive restaurants, yet avoid paying for apps if they can.)
Edited 2014-12-15 17:02 UTC
Oops, wrong link. Here is the one I meant to post:
http://danariely.com/2011/12/25/the-oatmeal-this-is-how-i-feel-abou…
Huh? So there are a lot of double blind studies that show this effect somewhere? Or did you just say to yourself that it made sense and people you know agree?
I’m not convinced that the pricing of apps is anything more than supply and demand acting in the crucible that Apple and Google has made for the app stores. They’re great because the aggregate demand into a central spot. They’re terrible because they aggregate supply into a central spot. Throw in the rules and regulations, and the prices you get are the result.
You mean whether the opinions of Tomi Ahonen, highly regarded mobile expert, and Dan Ariely, acclaimed behavioral economics researcher, both with dozens of publications in their fields, are based on facts?
The phenomenon of price anchoring, of which the “apps should be free” perception is a corollary, is indeed well researched.
You can start reading more about it here:
http://conversionxl.com/pricing-experiments-you-might-not-know-but-…
As an “easier to implement” alternative to having much much better active curation/ranking algorithms of the “TOP X APPS” lists by MS,Apple,Google (ranked by an assessed Value Index or some such),
perhaps the App Store owners should indeed do something rather ProActive about this HUGE perceived gulf between the $1 and $0 apps (versus as you say the ratiometrically smaller $1 $10 divide),
such as, after gifting new App Store account holders a one month/three month grace period to access their App Stores gratis, implementing a requirement where continued access would only be allowed after topping up ones account with (for instance) $10 for a further year’s access. What’s that, a few cups of coffee. And regarding the account credit – If You Know It’s Already There(and tied up for no other purpose), perhaps the jump to spending that $1 on that nicer, ad-free, non-fremium small, bona-fidely useful little app.. might just shrink. My Tl;Dr tuppence.
That might work but is quite complex and might turn people away who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to share their card details with Apple or Google.
Also the availability of free apps increases the attractivity of iOS/Android products.
A better option might be to turn all “free” apps into a “pay what you want” model with half of the price going to charity.
http://freakonomics.com/2010/07/20/how-to-maximize-pay-what-you-wis…
Isn’t a deeper historical shift at work here? During the PC era software became big and often bloated. Prices per software package were high. Until comparatively recently the size of the software PC market was not that large, and certainly a lot smaller than the mobile device software market (in terms of numbers of potential customers).
With the development of the mobile app market along with the collapse of price we have also seen a collapse of complexity and bloat (mostly). Now what were previously numerous different functions that would have been rolled into one big monolithic software package in the PC market is broken down and sold in the mobile app market as lots of different apps.
The other side of this transition from an open market dominated by high price big apps to a curated market of low price often mono-funcxtion apps is undermining of software piracy. When apps cost hundreds of dollars everyone was tempted at some point to pirate the software. Personally I love a pricing structure that makes purchasing trivial which means I can buy and try so many apps and not worry about cost too much.
Except, every report seems to indicate that app piracy is quite high on both the two major platforms. Seems like your theory isn’t holding up.
Hence the rise of the freemium model…. or at least that’s the reason they usually give us.
Piracy on iOS requires a jailbroken device and how many iDevices are jailbroken? A few percentage points at most I would think.
If software piracy is as widespread as you claim doesn’t that invalidate the whole point of Thom’s comments because it implies a wides speed alternative method of distributing and installing apps which bypass apps stores? If a significant proportion of people are loading apps outside of the app store systems then it would mean that the system of software on mobile is pretty much like the PCs model of software.
The truth of the matter is the nobody is going to pay hundreds of euros for a piece of software for their phone or tablet, or even forty or fifty euro. That’s the cause of the collapse in software pricing and margins. And given that collapse in pricing and margins the fact that the App Store can hand out billions of dollars to developers is actually quite impressive.
Blaming App Stores for the low price/low margin mobile software phenomena is like blaming the high price/high margin model of PC software on the fact that it was usually sold in a box.
Actually, no. A quick Google/DDG search for “iOS app piracy without jailbreak” should get you sorted. Here are a few;
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/01/01/low-down-dirty-iphone-app-pi…
http://getcydiaapps.com/install-cracked-apps-without-jailbreak-on-i…
http://www.multipie.co.uk/2014/04/bad-app-piracy-really/
Surely small compared to the total number of iOS installs in existence, but still a large number by anyone’s standards. I’d wager the number of people doing the cracked-app-without-jailbreak method far exceeds the total number of jailbroken iPhones out there, considering how many iPhones Apple sells in piracy hotbeds like China and Russia.
Also, from that last link,
Yeah, not really: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/02/android-market-game-…
http://www.slashgear.com/95-android-game-piracy-experience-highligh…
So I guess all the links show is that the Android app system is broken whereas the iOS app system is less broken and allows much greater flows of revenue to developers.
The main point is that the drop in average selling price of mobile apps, the lower margins of apps and the proliferation of small foot print/single purpose apps is not the result of selling them through an app store system anymore than the high price/margin bloated multifunction type of PC apps was the result of selling them in cardboard boxes. Its more a reflection of the inherent difference between small mobile devices and desktop PC systems.
There was also the limitation of distribution.
You either got the program on tape/floppy/cd, or you went without.
But with the advent of high speed modems, BBSs and the net blew that out of the water.
In essence there has been a basic confusion ever since the printed book (or maybe even the written word). What people were paying for was not the content, but the distribution of the physical media.
Remove the physical media, and the distribution cost drops through the floor.
Edited 2014-12-15 20:35 UTC
This is a ridiculous argument. The bottom line is developers set their own prices, and they App store models has just made easier for consumers to compare prices and functionality – previously, people had to trawl the internet to find the apps they needed (on desktops or older smartphones). Discoverability was low. Now, you can find all your apps nicely catalogued in a single location, so the market became more competitive.
And if Apple and Google are devaluing the work of developers, what then of Open Source Software?
Good question
Can’t wait to see Thom’s answer here.
there have always been bootleggers. they were called criminals and law enforcement, along with whoever they were bootlegging, attempted to shut down their operations. they were usually small-scale things. everyone else had to pay full price or wait for some kind of sale to get their goods.
there have always been cheap and poor people. nothing new there. shareware and nagware also goes back to the very beginning.
what changed in the software world was the concept of “open source”, aka, free software. the idea that something as good or better than windows existed, for FREE, was monumental at devaluing all software.
i’m not complaining, i think open source is and was important on several fronts. but it also devalues all other code, and the marketing of open source pushed that paying for code was somehow a waste. if free office exists the value of real office goes down. free databases, free image editors, free DAW’s– all devalue the paid versions.
there’s also way too much advertising in the modern software world. it clutters up everything.
i’d rather keep the app store model with better ranking and pushing of the actual useful software, with only demoes and utilities in the free range.
this is worse in music, where most of the population of music “lovers” have been stealing music for over a decade now, literally taking food out of the mouths of their beloved artists, all with their own stupid justifications for their theft. i’m not talking about “burn me that” once in a while, i’m talking about the total amount you spend per year on that media going way down. people these days will buy crappy beats headphones for $150 then steal music all over the place. if they put that $150 into the music economy to pay for content we’d have a different situation.
the only reason live music has continued to make money is because the nerds haven’t found a way to bootleg the experience and post it all over the internet.
I disagree with this statement. Mainly because of Pirated Windows software.
Windows piracy has had a for more corrosive effect than Linux has. As someone who has previously pirated large amounts of content. I find that the ease of access to commercial software for free is far more enticing than anything about Linux’s price.
In fact in my older age/more recently I’ve taken to rewriting software that I want as Open Source projects, rather than bothering to pirate software. So I’ve now gone from illegal downloading to content creator. If you forced everyone on Windows to pay for software they would jump to Linux in a second. If Linux is so used to making people get free stuff then why is Linux so bad at the things most people would like it to do? The answer is of course that they are already pirating Windows and the majority don’t care about Linux at all.
The average person hasn’t even heard of Linux and those who have don’t care to use it.
Edited 2014-12-15 19:18 UTC
“what changed in the software world was the concept of “open source”, aka, free software. the idea that something as good or better than windows existed, for FREE, was monumental at devaluing all software”
Riiiight, that is why MSFT hasn’t made a dime of MS Office in years and why Linux laptops are in every B&M on the planet…oh wait, reality is the exact opposite!
Protip, it had absolutely nothing to do with FOSS and everything to do with supply and demand. Right now thanks to digital dropping the barrier to entry in every medium the consumer is awash in free entertainment and when you add in the fact that most see mobile as disposable? Well no duh the price drops through the floor.
Also note I seriously doubt you’d find a FOSS app even in the top 10 of mobile, maybe not even in the top 20, just like Linux in the desktop arena it simply is a non factor.
This isn’t factually true. The attitude long predates the existence of Windows, or consumer-oriented open source software. Back in the 1980s, software was so devalued that huge numbers of people paid nothing for it. If you saw a program at a friend’s house or at work which you liked, the usual response was to get out a blank floppy and type “diskcopy a: b:” – you did not go out and buy the program. When Lode Runner came out for the PC, everyone I knew had a copy but not one of them had paid for it. This is not just anecdotal – the best estimates back then were that for most programs, you had between one and five pirated copies being used for every copy that was sold. WordStar was estimated to have eight pirated copies in circulation for every copy sold.
So, no, the devaluation of software has nothing to do with the availability of open source. It reflects the way a large number of people have always perceived software.
It was also common practice back then to make multiple copies of the floppies for everyday use, and put the originals into storage.
The appstore is hardly the cause. For whatever reason people are so used to ‘free’ software that any price is bad.
It doesn’t matter if they’re used to free software because their buddy down the road installs a pirated game or windows. It doesn’t matter if you’re into open source software. It doesn’t matter if you like ad supported software. The net result is people are used to free software.
I catch myself doing it too. I try and stop myself.
Heck, I think appstores actually help developers.
Steam has made it so easy to buy games in an affordable manner, I end up buying games. I really do think of the silly effort of finding a torrent and installing and the risk of virii… and then I think of Steam.
Were people buying apps for mobile phones on mass before the AppStores? I don’t recall it.
Heck, one of the best things for develops about the ‘cloud’ is they can release ‘free’ clients and then charge people once they’re hooked for a subscription or upgrades. On the goodside, this can be useful apps (time tracking, accounting, office…) On the other hand, it can be silly freemium games.
“Were people buying apps for mobile phones on mass before the AppStores? I don’t recall it. ”
Its kind of hard to judge considering the mass adoption of mobile and app stores (as we know them for mobile devices – I’m not intending to start a debate on whether or not Linux/apt-get, yum, etc. were app stores – hint: they weren’t/aren’t) really happened at the same time.
Marx old line about the coercive laws of competition comes to mind…
Anyone who solely uses the App Store for marketing is going to lose, as you can not control your message on the App Store. Drive by purchases on the App Store are gravy.
You want to sell software, market it. App Store is delivery. Just like a grocery store.
Big company comes out with new dishwasher detergent. Goes multi-media with TV ads, magazine ads, internet columns. Then the company pushes it to the store fronts, or the customers request the store carry it.
As for games vs “apps”. Games are content, they’re timely, they’re renewable and disposable — like TV shows.
Apps are utility. Some are so generic that competition is difficult simply because the tool is such a commodity. How many reminder apps do people really need?
Others are so niche, they simply don’t have a general market, so refer to marketing above.
Finally there are the apps that are nothing but ad delivery skins on top of existing media web sites. Problems with AdBlock? Push the users to a dedicated app.
As if I need a dedicated app to read every newspaper. The newspapers sure think so.
I suspect the monument valley thing is a true misunderstanding of the target audience; they are not ‘cheapskates’, just extremely annoyed by DLC.
Edited 2014-12-16 04:25 UTC
Of the top 50 ‘applications’ in the App Store, virtually all of them are games. Of those games, virtually all are “freemium”, the semi-scummy or outright scummy pay-to-win games we all despise
It should be painfully obvious how wrong this is. So we all despise freemium games yet they dominate the app store listings. Perfectly logical statement there.
Actual applications are virtually nowhere to be found in the top lists. Accordingly, the vast majority of revenue – more than 75%, this analyst claims – goes to game companies, not application developers.
So? What makes games inherently inferior to applications? Games are a consumable, so it makes perfect sense that more will be sold, while applications, once useful, can be useful forever and don’t need to be re-purchased.
The application store model is working out great for a few large players and Apple/Google, but as an independent developer, the odds of making it big in either the Android or iOS application store are very slim; in fact, the few large players are so dominant that your work will most likely never bubble to the surface of the ocean filled with freemium crap.
That would be exactly how it has always been. You think an independent developer had any larger chance of making it big in the Windows world before apps existed? Of course not. When a new market emerges opportunities abound. When it matures the players in it consolidate and it becomes harder for the little guys to compete. That should be obvious.
This is further highlighted by the countless stories of whining users on both the iOS and Android side whenever a developer decides to charge for an update or add-on to an existing application.
In other shocking news, some dude at the local diner complained when his coffee refill was not free, despite the fact that the refill doubled the amount of coffee he got.
Because large companies can release seemingly “free” games and applications, stupid people expect every mobile game and application to be free.
Wrong. Everyone can release freemium games. Turns out that’s the most effective way to make money and many independent developers also do it.
Apple (and Google) have instigated a race to the bottom, massively devaluing the work of developers.
Please do elaborate exactly how Google or Apple have done this.
The developers of Monument Valley as well as Chris Lacey have put a lot of hard work in their game and application, yet people expect it to be free, and are enraged when they are confronted with the fact that developers need to eat too, and that games and applications do not just magically materialise out of the the æther.
Blah blah blah total nonsense. For your information Monument Valley spent a lot of time on the top charts on iOS and is currently at #18 in the top Paid. I’m sure they don’t have any trouble eating.
With only a minimal amount of mobile experience, including purchasing some apps for the Android platform, it would help me understand the issue being discussed if some examples were given.
Name some top-quality applications and games written by independent developers that are being bypassed by the current “app store” model?
For the record, I hate the “freemium” crap and Android apps listed as “free” that are really adware.
Perhaps a return to the old-school way, browsing for apps at independent websites that vet the software and certify it as ad-free. Skip the big app stores all together.
I’m actually, as I don’t game, wondering what/where all these apps worth paying for are. Once you get outside software that might leverage some earning ability in business big or small what’s left that hasn’t been commodified into the OS or free, in some sense.
I’m not a developer but I wonder what you hard done by developers would fork out real monies for that doesn’t pay for its keep or entertain mindlessly for hours on end? Just asking…
But Why? Its because the swarms of early independent developers, having virtually no barrier of entry or financial overhead to keep them honest, kept undercutting each other on pricing to increase the number of purchases (and consequently get higher on the charts creating a positive feedback loop). It worked out ok for a handful of developers, thus attracting even more swarms of independent developers without-a-clue trying to get rich quick.
No one was trying to make honest money, they were trying to win the networking-effects lottery. Everyone peed in the pool, and now the pool stinks…
The big players want nothing to do with it anymore (i.e. straight sales) – its ruined for them by this point. They make more money selling stupid virtual widgets and other such nonsense. So they leave the market to the “little guys” so they can continue pricing each other out of business.
…and eventually they WILL price each other out of business, and then the few players left may start pushing prices up again to fill the vacuum and hopefully stabilize pricing at realistic levels.
There is nothing new or interesting about any of this. Virtually every market that ever existed behaves this way over its lifetime. There is an initial gold rush, a few people make out like thieves, most everyone goes out of business, and those that survive figure out how to make due.
What I don’t understand is why anyone would expect anything different…
One problem is the lack of store competition. To get other stores on your phone, you must be a nerd AND go out of your way.
Just like Microsoft benefits from users being happy with another browser, the phone guys would benefit from users being happy discovering and using the right apps for them. But everyone is too greedy. #1 priority is fleece everyone at the doorstep.
The only way we got official browser competition integrated into Windows is because the EU forced it on Microsoft. Who will force the phone guys to allow other store apps in their store apps, or even better, to provide an API for other store makers to hook into each others store apps? Nobody anytime soon. Chug along now…
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