iPhone App Pricing Limits Developers

HardYakka writes "According to this post in the Fortune blog, the iTunes app store has been a boon for users but some developers are saying the number of free and 99 cent apps make it difficult for developers to create complex, higher priced apps. Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory says the iPhone may never get its killer app like the spreadsheet was for the Mac. If Apple does not do something, the store will be left with only ring tones and simple games. Some are suggesting that overpaid developers are the problem and the recession will soon lower the wages and costs for complex apps."

Comments

What a whiner.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Iâ(TM)ve been thinking about whatâ(TM)s causing this rush to the 99Â price point. From what I can tell, itâ(TM)s because people are buying our products sight unseen. I see customers complaining about how âoeexpensiveâ a $4.99 app is and that it should cost less. (Do they do the same thing when they walk into Starbucks?) The only justification I can find for these attitudes is that you only have a screenshot to evaluate the quality of a product. A buck is easy to waste on an app that looks great in iTunes but works poorly once you install it.

Why not release a free, crippled version of your app that allows people to look at it, evaluate it & decide if it's worth $2.99? Now where have I heard of that business model before?

Honestly, there's so many development restrictions on iPhone apps, why bother publicizing this non-story.

Right

[Junior J. Junior III]

Some are suggesting that overpaid developers are the problem and the recession will soon lower the wages and costs for complex apps."

Because in the Shitty New Economy, people will be blowing all kinds of money on applications for their overpriced smartphones.

competition?

[arbiter1]

Another limiting factor on iphone app's is fact apple will kill off any app that competes with their's or anything they are about to put out.

Re:Add Top Apps for more price ranges

[Anthony_Cargile]

I'm more worried about the usage of the oxymoron "overpaid developer".

It's a stupid rant

[tkrotchko]

It's a stupid rant. Look at the market for PC software.

There are a lot of *free* applications. Lots. More than I can every use.

Then there are inexpensive shareware stuff. $5-15

Then there are the mainstream shareware apps. $40-60

From there, applications go as high as you want to pay.... $100-500 $1000, $5000

All are available on the internet. Do free applications limit the abilities of developers to churn out $50 software? Or $100 software? No. People will pay what the software is worth.

This guy seems to be making the argument that somehow a low price sets the expectation of low prices. It's a dumb argument. If developers come up with an application that's worth $500 guess what... they will pay $500.

What he's really saying that the $1 applications are so good that he can't compete. And that's probably true. What he needs to do is make his applications worth more than $1. It's not the platform that's holding him back. It's not the price of cheap software holding him back, it's his own inability to write valuable software that commands a premium price. Seriously. Does he even understand that you can't write a general purpose iPhone app and expect to get $50 for it? He's going to have to hit some vertical market software (highly specialized) to command premium dollars. How about a full-blown VST/Softsynth app that will accept plugins for the iPhone? I'd pay $200 for that. How about working with a high-end electronics company to write apps to control lighting/music for home-automation? He could probably get $300-500 for that.

Just being a good programmer isn't good enough. He should know better.

Seriously, he's all wet.

Re:Add Top Apps for more price ranges

[Anthony_Cargile]

And if thats not bad enough, Apple may at any time remove an app designed by us "overpaid developers" just because it may conflict with an existing (or to be existing) Apple app, or if it just pisses Apple off (IAmRich).

I've joked ever since I found out about this that Opera, the Mozilla Foundation and Sun should release their software for the jailbroken iPhones only, in addition to an Android port.

Mobile platforms are the new platform wars: Android (representing Linux), iPhone (Mac), and Windows Mobile (Win). The next generation developers will have to port apps painfully across these platforms, or pick and choose at the cost of some customers. Not to mention other platforms like Blackberry and the like that don't fall into those categories, save Sun's JavaME portability.

If I were ever asked to write a mobile client for any application of mine by anybody, public or not, I would probably shoot myself at the first thought of "But I have this phone". You can have it, spare me until the dust settles.
</rant>

Re:Like spreadsheets for the MAC?

[_Sprocket_]

VisiCalc was first released for the Apple (not Mac), and sales skyrocketed. Apple's were the original business desktop computer.

And not only that, they were a key part of getting IBM to consider the microcomputer more than a toy. Enter the IBM PC.

Re:Add Top Apps for more price ranges

[tapehands]

oy. Seriously...if I were a developer that was considering writing an app that could be construed as "killer", the #1 turnoff would be Apple's ability to cannibalize my work.

What recourse, if any, would there be if Apple decided to yank my $XX app off the store, only to have the same functionality trumpeted in a new firmware release? (like they already have done)

Futhermore, Apple chooses when and where to enforce their store rules. Google is allowed to break rules. Would a small development firm be so lucky?

There just isn't enough incentive or security to develop something much more useful than a game, ringtone, or eggtimer.

It's UNIX! I Know This!

[SuperKendall]

Jeez, when will people accept that Macs are designed by people who themselves are designers and the OS is built around the typical workflow of designers and not that of code geeks and techies?

If you knew anything of the internals you'd know just how wrong you actually were. Who among the code geeks and "techies" would not appreciate a mainstream computer that comes with Bash, Apache, Perl, PHP and Ruby built right in? Or can appreciate upcoming things like OpenCL?

It's true there are ALSO a lot of great design oriented features added atop the very nice technical layer - but the technical innards are very much aimed squarely at the people you think have no interest.