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An App Store For iPhone Software
Steve Jobs demonstrated a new "App Store" that will be pushed out to all iPhones in June. It's available now in beta. This will be the exclusive avenue developers will use to get their iPhone apps, written to the newly released SDK, to customers. Developers will get 70% of the proceeds from sales of their goods on the App store, with no further charges for hosting, credit-card processing, etc. Jobs called this "the best deal going to distribute applications in the mobile space."
"And there's no charge for developers to distribute free applications"
Well... now I'm excited
The SDK is going to be HUGE for the jailbreaking community. They now have an official documented API and development environment. So there will be apps out there way earlier than 4 months.
IT sounds like the limitations on the SDK are not as drastic as I feared, but I strongly suspect that apple will limit ichat type clients though. Those would kill the golden goose that is SMS.
The more limiting the SDK is, the more vibrant the jailbroken app community will be.
I'm waiting for the Apple servers to recover from the melt-down and I'll be downloading the SDK. Looks like a geeky evening for me.
Apps the iPhone needs:
MMS: WTF apple? This was obvious...
A Calculator that doesn't suck: RPN and trig functions etc. No more Dollar store Calc.
Chat client that uses wifi AND wireless data.
Sheldon
Actually this could be a very sweet deal for developers.
... but it seems to me that even with Apple taking a 30% cut, the exposure that the App store gives could provide the developers with WAY more sales than they could manage to get going solo.
Now, I didn't read the details so maybe apple will prevent developers from selling their apps direct AND going through the App store
It's kind of like the Record Labels and Recording Artists. The only difference being that recording artists don't get to keep 70% of their sales and they usually take huge cash advances to record their albums that they have to pay back with absolutely no guarantee that they'll sell enough records to pay it back plus they're in a contract that promises the label X number of further records.
No I don't have a problem with Apple's App store as long as they're providing a valuable service for the developers and on the surface it appears that they are. When they take the majority of the sales and lock the developers into contracts promising exclusive deals with the App store for years to come THEN I'll say the developers are better going solo. To me this seems like the high-exposure radio station of indie software marketing.
Direct sales don't come anywhere close to 100% in the real world. You have to pay for the distribution medium. If that is a box on a shelf, you generally pay for shelf space at the major retailers up front, and then make your money back after they take their cut.
If you sell via the web, you have hosting costs, bandwidth isn't free, web site development costs money and time, managing updates requires atleast half a clue. You also have to do marketing if you expect it to get popular, just putting up a page doesn't mean people will buy your stuff, reguardless of how great it is, they have to find it first. So that means some form of advertising, sometimes all you need is to have Google index your site, if people are looking for something that only you offer. But its unlikely you are the first, and certainly not the most popular with your brand new software, so you aren't going to be near the top of the list without some Google bombing, which isn't free since it requires work at the very least.
In this case, your 30% taken by Apple puts you on the definative list of iPhone software, and it makes you somewhat trusted, since Apple hasn't banned you yet. So if you think web distribution is closer to 100% then I say that you get 100% free marketing with the AppStore.
Pick any other form of distribution and you'll find that its never anywhere close to 100%.
30% is high. The company I work for distributes portable applications for U3 devices, on the U3 website, they charge 25% at the lost volume of sales. Of course, the also aren't Apple so its not suprising.
If you want to bitch that Apple is charging too much, fine that argument I'll listen to. Claiming that direct sales is going to be close to 100%, thats just silly once you consider all the real costs that go into doing it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I suspect that it will be a monitor the app after the fact type of thing. Apple and AT&T know who you are as the app author. So if your app does something funky, then they pull the plug on it. There's no way the apple folks are going to scour source for all the apps that will flow in. I suspect they have a profiling tool that checks port usage etc and off it goes. Then if it's doing something sneaky, AT&T will catch it eventually if it's popular, and pull the plug. If it's not popular (IE you and your aunt berha are exchanging chat messages over the data network not SMS) then it's really not an issue.
The cost of putting actual eyeballs on code is so high that they would never do it. But some profiling tools would be cheap to use.
Sheldon
And presumably you could get someone in a generous position to offer free distribution of open source applications under a single "publisher". Ie, twenty free apps published by "FreeSoftwareInc", and suddenly its $5 per developer, not $100.
Thats a price thats easy to make back up with ads, etc, on the "application" website.
Yep, that's right, just like we had to pay an upgrade fee when we got the first version of iTunes with the iTMS, and then a year or so ago had to pay an upgrade fee for a version of iTunes that had a built-in movie store.
I have to admit that I doubt the "obscure accounting rule" explanation has ever been true. It certainly isn't true when Apple is pushing something they're making revenues from like a music, movie, and now software, store. But I don't think it's true for goodwill type freebies either. I think the truth is Apple is cheap. This is the same Apple that was charging $20 for "Quicktime Pro" for all those years. This is about revenue generation, not about accounting.
And exactly how much did you pay for iTunes? $100? $50? $20?
It was, and is, available as a free download from Apple. Since Apple didn't generate any revenue for giving you iTunes they don't have to charge you to give you a new/updated version. It's as simple as that.
Before someone brings this up, the fact that iTunes is used to sync to iPods, iPhone and iPod Touch is completely irrelevant. It's entirely possible to use iTunes without buying anything from Apple. Sure you won't be able to take your music or videos with you, but they work just dandy on your computer.
You must be new, welcome to the Internet. Here on the Internet you are required to view any publicly held company as evil and any effort on their part to charge for a service as pure, unadulterated greed preferably attributed to their CEO or other high-ranking executive. Corporations should provide as many possible services for free, regardless of the time, capital, and human resources required to develop and run those services or products. Any efforts of corporations to charge money in voluntary exchange for their services or products is to be likened to highway robbery, extortion, or in the case of particularly large corporations, rape. I hope these guidelines have helped. May your future be full of forum discussions loathing corporations and their evil/greedy ways.
a) The hardware - some pretty sweet margins b) A nice cut (~15 to 25%) on the montly fees 3) A 30% cut on all software sold (except of course the free apps)
Contrast this to a Windows mobile phone. Microsoft gets paid a fixed license amount on each device sold and makes nothing on the hardware, the monthly fee, and any software sold to run on their OS. This helps companies compete on hardware, apps etc. I think Apple is gonna miss out on small companies(where the most innovation lies) which cannot afford the 30% overhead for their software sales. Also Apple being the gatekeeper of the software will hurt apps(even free ones) that try to fundamentally interact with the hardware in a non-approved Apple way. The iPhone is aimed at the casual consumers, most of whom don't read long forum threads dedicated to jailbreaking it.
As of now, this looks like a rerun of the 80s microcomputer war and we all know how that turned out to be. It's all about 'Developers, Developers and Developers'. Microsoft gets that and ships excellent development tools with no restrictions at all. Right now, Windows Mobile phones may suck, but heavy competition between handset manufacturers is going to make them better and Windows Mobile OS(look at 6.1 and upcoming 7.0) is heading towards being 'good enough'(like DOS and Windows 3.11). Already we see devices like the Sony Xperia (video ad) coming out which will give Apple a run for their money. Remember what IBM, Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq did to Apple back in the 80s? Will Sony, Samsung, Nokia be their equivalent in this round?
I think Apple is missing the bandwagon again in their spirit to make money immediately and are killing the gold egg laying goose for their short term benefit.This space for rent.
$99 per developer to publish as many software titles as you want for free *is* low money. If you can't afford a $99 developer program, you probably can't afford the $399 device to test it on or the computer to host it, or the food to eat while you code...
E pluribus unum
give me a break... MSDN costs a lot more than $99. Almost everyone charges more. You will spend 10x that much to join the program for the blackberry. $99 to join the program, get all the tools, simulator, docs, dev videos, hosting, update service, etc. I know it's a common sentiment on slashdot that everyone should get everything for free and everyone (else) should work without pay to give you everything you want free, but the attitude is getting tiresome.
E pluribus unum