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Is the Apple App Store a Casino?
An anonymous reader writes "Fast Company takes a look at the Apple App Store and concludes that it's a casino where most developers are making tragic losses and a tiny few are striking it filthy rich. The article discusses a new book exposing the App Store millionaires, called 'Appillionaires,' which compares the psychological effects of a hit app on a programmer to a gambler's high. One millionaire programmer explains the intense feeling of being in the top-ten: 'The App Store had established some kind of intravenous connection to my body and was pumping me full of Apple-branded heroin.' But, the piece warns, the majority of developers fail to make any return on their app."
This is how it works. Tiny few become really rich, most barely make a living. Some better, some worse. It's not a casino, and it's not limited to app store.
Sounds like the results of putting an App for sale in the App store is like putting an App for sale anywhere.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
If John Q. Wallet invents some must-have widget which is easy to manufacture, cheap, and available everywhere; and suddenly sells millions of them, I'll bet he's feeling pretty good about that too. However, if he invents something that is a piece of crap that no one buys, he's going to have just as much of a loss.
This phenomenon is hardly new, and certainly not localized to the iTunes App Store.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
"Very few people are making it big from a platform whose curator charges $99 per year to run your own programs on your own hardware plus 30 percent of the price for all purchases from the only available app store."
Where have I heard that one before?
it costs $99 a year to be an iOS developer. Assuming you also had to buy a mac, let's add $1000 (that'll get you a nice mac mini).
I hardly call that tragic losses.
*Note: those are the only two app store specific costs. Yeah people spend money making shitty software all the time, that's not unique to Apple or iOS
Isn't the developer fee like $100 a year? That seems incredibly removed from tragic. Yes, a developer or team might spend some of their own money to develop an app or advertise it, but that money is going elsewhere, and not Apple (except for buying the required Macs to actually develop). So it doesn't seem like a casino to me, just inexperience or bad reading of the market.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Some people make apps for the same purpose of going to a Casino. :)
"Fun"
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
I see it more like a mining boom. Apple sells the picks and shovels. In 10 years their platform might be a ghost town. Let's see, how much more can we beat this dead horse of an Old West analogy...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I suspect this will look like a lot of other comments to follow, but hey, if you publish something, and it hits home with people, you'll succeed. How to "hit home with people" is the key, and it's what most programmer types don't know -- they know code, they know algorithms, they know UI... but they don't (typically) know marketing... how to target a need, how to target a niche. That's why one or two guy development shops fail, but 5-10 guy development shops (with at least one or two marketing people) in them can succeed.
This is not science. This is understanding human behavior.
Same thing with the Xbox live indie games channel
We demand people fairly buy all of the apps on the App Store! Any app that is not bought fairly is being discriminated against!
It's called capitalism.
I'll be happy if my app will just make it past app review limbo.
First Apple was like a cult, then it was like a religion, now it's like a casino. Seriously how stupid do you have to be to believe this crap?
'The App Store had established some kind of intravenous connection to my body and was pumping me full of Apple-branded heroin.
Gee, you think this is the sentence that got this story approved for Slashdot?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Viva Las iTunes
"Must-have widget" vs. "piece of crap" isn't perfectly correlated to "sells millions" vs. "no one buys". As I understood the article, what people end up discovering to buy is a matter of chance, not merit.
Success in a Casino is about lack.
Making a successful application is about ability.
Make a good and fun game, and you will profit from it.
Make an exceptional game over an original idea, and win a fortune.
Make a mediocre ripoff of an idea already implemented a thousand times, have a loss.
It is nothing like a Casino.
Dumbass contrasts the ET debacle with the inability to see all these hobbyists not making money today... Whatever fuckwit. ET was published by a huge established company. There is absolutely no comparison to the "embarrassment" of ET and a hobbyist programmer producing bargin bin shit no one wants, either today or back then.. Go fuck yourself, "journalists"
I've read comments in past stories about the iOS developer program from people who own a Mac but still can't develop because the Mac is too old to run recent Xcode. So you end up having to depreciate the Mac and the iPod touch on which to test as annual expenses just like the developer fee.
Success in a Casino is about luck.
Making a successful application is about ability.
Make a good and fun game, and you will profit from it.
Make an exceptional game over an original idea, and win a fortune.
Make a mediocre ripoff of an idea already implemented a thousand times, have a loss.
It is nothing like a Casino.
(repost in order to correct silly grammatical error that resulted in a different meaning)
The winner in the casino is fundamentally deterministic, whereas with the app store, it's mostly a matter of luck.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Make a good and fun game, and you will profit from it.
Not if next to nobody finds your good and fun game, or even your exceptional game over an original idea, because all the median user is looking for is a specific Rovio product.
brick and mortar resellers charge far more than 30%.
I'm pretty sure that's not the working definition of a Casino but yes like most businesses apps fail most of the time. Nothing to see here, move along.
they don't (typically) know marketing... how to target a need, how to target a niche. That's why one or two guy development shops fail, but 5-10 guy development shops (with at least one or two marketing people) in them can succeed.
So what's a reliable formula from expanding from two guys to 5-10? Or must one first move to Seattle and learn the video game business at an established video game developer?
It's a natural effect to accomplishment. You take a shot and build an app, succeeding is the rush you get. Same thing with betting and any other site you are on. Hell, the same could be said about making it to the front page of Digg or Reddit.
So if you need a 2007 Mac to run the iOS developer tools, then you need a new Mac every four or five years (to depreciate at $150 per year for a Mac mini or $250 per year for a MacBook Air). Combine this with a new iPod touch every two years (to depreciate at $150 per year), and we can estimate the total cost of hardware plus certificate at $400 to $500 per year.
It's the "buzz" and feedback effect your app gets once it's in the top 10 / top 50 that causes such a disparity.
Ironically by adding an element of random selection to the top 10, perhaps selecting 10 at random from the top 50... or instead, selecting the top 50 from the top 500 (all of which are quality apps) you could probably spread the money a bit better, and Apple could probably sell more apps overall!
If you develop yet another puzzle game, you're up to compete with the Zingas of the world, and chances are you'll hit the wall. On the other hand, if you focus on solving real problems and using the advantages of the platform to improve your customer's life, you might be onto something. Case in point, Appfluence (disclaimer: I co-founded it). We make Priority Matrix, a productivity app for a niche market that highly values time savings and clarity of mind. We're nowhere near top 10 (although we've been close at times), but it's consistent income with a lot of potential.
To do list for Windows
I don't know what anyone's crying about. This is how it works. You put your product out there and hope someone sees it and likes it. If it's good enough it will succeed. If not, oh well.
The reason this is such a bad analogy has nothing to do with whether an app succeeds because of luck, or how much the annual fees are. It has to do with where the money comes from. The money a developer gets comes, ultimately, from customers buying the app. Yes, the middleman takes a lot (but perhaps not more than more middlemen), but that doesn't make it a casino. In a casino, all the money coming in is from the gamblers, and all the money you win is from other gamblers (minus the house's cut). The same is true in a lottery. But an app store is completely different. Sure, it's unpredictable whether you will make big, medium, or no money, but the source of that money is not your fellow developers' entry fees.
.sig withheld by request
As opposed to Android, which doesn't charge $99 per year and allows distribution of APKs outside Android Market.
My point is that a lot of people appear to forget that Apple copied the iOS developer program's pricing structure directly from that of Xbox Live Indie Games, just as I had originally predicted when Apple first announced the iOS 2 developer program.
Could you please help explain the variables other than usefulness that both MachineShedFred and I missed?
All that's really happening here is that millions of low-selling software applications, instead of being sold in the far-flung corners of the internet, have now been gathered into one place: the Apple App Store. So the fact that most applications are not actually all that successful is just more visible now than it once was.
But, yeah, that's not already depreciated?
Some people have posted comments to previous articles about the iOS developer program claiming that anybody should be able to afford $99. They appear to treat the required hardware as a one-time expense and forget that one needs to replace both the Mac and the iPod touch with the current model every few years.
And if you were to do it yourself, at a minimum you'd require 1) a web domain ($20/year), 2) web hosting (price varies, but certainly $30/year), 3) advertising of some sort (price?). The point is that you're actually getting something in exchange for what you pay Apple. It's not like in the absence of the App Store, you'd be able to market and distribute software for nothing.
the majority of developers fail to make any return on their app
The majority don't lose a lot even if their app fails, unlike a gambler who must constantly bet a lot. Apps can be coded in your spare time, and if a concept becomes popular enough, you can follow it up with something a little more fleshed out the next time and keep iterating until you reach the point of diminishing returns. Then start putting out concepts again until you find your niche, and start iterating again.
Twinstiq, game news
Newsflash! Software products require good marketing, film at 11:00.
Seriously. If you have a great product, you need a business plan to sell it, even if it's a smartphone app. "Stick it on the app store and hope for the best, because some guy made a million bucks with a fart simulator" isn't a business plan.
You forgot the cost of setting up an actual online shop. SSL certificates aren't free, nor are online card processors which take a percentage.
But hey, at least he'd be saving $99 and sticking it to The Man...
Trolling is a art,
I'm reliably making money from the App Store, $75000 (on the side, in addition to my day job) in the last year and half actually. How? By writing apps for all those people that think they're going to get rich from App Store. I'd say probably 10% of my clients have made any money from their apps. Personally I don't try to feed their notions, I just produce the best product I can for them, and they can worry about making money from it, I'll take my money upfront for the coding thank you very much. I always turn down the projects where they want to do "profit sharing".
I do laugh at the guys that make me sign an NDA before they show me their super secret idea. Dude, ideas are a time a dozen, somebody's probably already thought of whatever idea it is you have.
The odds aren't good enough to be a casino. It is more like a lottery, hundreds of thousands to one against making any decent money.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Please point me to the market where i am guaranteed to profit.
Whether you like Apple or not, whether you agree with their walled model or not, and whether you think it makes sense (or not) to be an iOS developer - where is the tragedy here?
Choosing to use the word "tragic" in this context was a completely bizarre decision.
#DeleteChrome
It's different in that a developer specifically needs a Mac in addition to whatever he uses to develop for other platforms, unless the only other platform for which he develops is Mac OS X.
It's an app store, idiot. When they describe a "gamble", smart developers will typically not work for shares, they will work for wages. So developers aren't really gambling anything: if you are the one who is dumping money on developers so that they can turn your dumb idea into an app, it is you who is taking the foolish gamble. If you are a lone developer making an app on your own time, then hopefully the time spent making your own app is valuable to you (learning experience, etc), whether or not that app is actually successful. What, you actually thought your one-off app was going to make you filthy rich?
These were the same dorks who pushed the "internet boom" in the 90's, claiming that every new startup, no matter how fucked their business plan was, was a "gold mine". We even had a parody called "F*cked Company" which daily documented all the businesses failing in Silicon Alley (NYC) during the bust period of 2000 to 2002.
They have a lot of nerve to call the App Store a "casino", when they are the lapdogs of the stock market.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Can you do Xbox programming on a Pentium 4?
What was current in 2001 when the Xbox came out?
There are lies, damn lies then there is statistics. Here is different survey that concludes the opposite:
http://maniacdev.com/survey-says-median-ios-game-revenue-2400-average-86315-per-game-last-12-months/
- Over 250 independent game developers were surveyed
- Over 60% Of Those Surveyed Were Not Full-Time Game Developers
- The mean average revenue from those surveyed was $165,121. $86,315 average per game in sales and non-sales revenue the past 12 months.
- The median revenue per game was $2,400 in sales and non-sales revenue.
If you RTFA, you will see that they say this. I guess repeating an insightful article is insightful....
2007 (2006) is about the switch from PowerPC to X86 processor. That's a one off switch, not one that will happen "every 4 or 5 years".
First there was the 68K to PowerPC switch. Then there was the old world ROM to new world ROM switch. Then there was the PowerPC to x86 switch.
That being said, eventually all developers will want to move on to a new computer because their old one is too slow for recent tools. Whether their development environment is Mac or PC. It's pretty dumb to single Mac out as anything different.
A Mac is more expensive than a Windows PC because Apple has chosen to target midrange and high-end market segments, not low-end.
You probably own a computer already
It's possible that the computer that I own already isn't fully depreciated and therefore not due for replacement, such as if I bought it less than not knowing that I would want to jump into iOS application development. One has to either A. buy a second computer solely for iOS application development or B. wait until one's computer is due for replacement before beginning iOS application development.
and if you can replace whatever you have with your app-developing Mac, cut that number even further.
But to use a Mac for anything other than running Mac applications, such as running Windows applications on which I depend, I'd have to buy a copy of Windows for $200. At the height of the netbook craze, new nettop PCs were selling for that much.
Parallels with Windows costs $260. I could buy a Windows laptop for that much.
You have to buy hardware for software development
I don't have to buy one specific company's computer, which a random user is statistically unlikely to already own, unless I'm developing for iOS.
Most application developers don't make any money *outside* the app store, either. Never have. Most fail. The thing with the app store is that many, many more get to try.
Listen, some people work really hard to put out the best app in the world, but almost everything in every app store is total crap. It shouldn't be a surprise that those shovelware apps aren't huge sellers.
I read the internet for the articles.
Really? Appillionaires? Appillionaires.
I have a lot of problems with this article. First, it lacks any real numbers and just throws around fancy adjectives. How many developers are making $0 or negative money? The cost to make an app is close to zero if you do it yourself. So very few people should be losing money, even if they make a game that doesn't sell.
Second, there are two types of mobile developers; independent and institutional. Independent are the people trying to start a company by selling something like a game. Institutional are the people who have salaried jobs at places like Wells Fargo and have the responsibility of making a bank app that's usually given away for free to all existing customers. Without the shift to mobile pioneered by Apple, these types of institutional jobs may not exist.
Third, you don't have to be a millionaire to be considered a success. If someone makes an app in their spare time and brings in an extra $5-10k a year, that is a success for them. No, it's not enough to quit their full time job, but that is not every developer's goal.
Yeah, it was nice of the "journalist" to tell us about his personal millionaire experience and the book he's now selling to talk about it (probably burnt all his cash). Those "paragraphs" are all I personally want to know about this topic.
The ET "analogy" also bothered me.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
It is so unfair that the top 1% of the application developers are controlling such a big part of the app store market. What about the other 99% of the developers? Why aren't they receiving their fair share of the total application expenditures? There certainly needs to be a government panel or commission that is responsible for taxing these developers and giving some of the proceeds from the apps that actually sell to those less fortunate developers.
But that's the point innit. The app store is full of Fart Apps. When The Cloud makes it trivial for anyone to create a Cloud Service, there will be half a million Fart Services.
You lose money on your Fart App? Great, that's exactly how life should be.
Deleted
Build something brilliant. Make it great. Price it sensibly. Be honest and proud in describing it.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Maybe i am thinking of the android app store but i thought that Apple, like Google, tried to promote and help new apps get their due attention and get noticed - but it seems that, from the article, that new apps are getting plundered because of every increasing new apps that stack on top of them. I think "new" apps should at least have a month to be more noticeable than lets say something like angry birds, that has had time to collect their own following.
Can anyone verify the differences between the android app store vs apple app store in terms of new app visibility? That is, what are their rules and/or policies regarding brand new apps? thanks
Well, would if I could, but I can't even test an app on a phone without paying for it. I strongly believe the ecosystem will smother itself someday (and that's true for everyone, not only apple).
And you pay those prices for basic hosting and web domain? No wonder you think 99$ is cheap.
So it's like every other market in the known history of civilization.
OCCUPY THE APP STORE! :-P
And how do you make a loss? If I diet do I gain negative weight?
I've seen plenty of niche android apps that are publicly available on the developer's website and nowhere else, presumably because the dev didn't want to go through the hassle of signing up to google's market.
That or the fact that there was no Android-powered counterpart to the iPod touch until last month when Samsung introduced the Galaxy Player. The previous closest match, Archos 43, was based on AOSP and thus didn't have Android Market.
Actually, SSL certificates are free if you don't rely on a CA to give you one. And paypal (for example) charges 10 times less of what apple charges for their services.
So how should a programmer with a vision find the right graphic artist, UI designer, and marketer?
Despite how cool smart-phones are, they are extremely limited in what can be done on a ~4" screen. Few mobile apps are much more than widgets. 1. Make something truly compelling (within the constraints of the platform). 2. Stop giving them away for free. 3. Advertising isn't limited to the App Store.
Or because it's only being bought by 15 million people a year?
Say among the 15 million Macs and the tens of millions more computers that come with Windows, I pick a computer to buy at random. Then a few months later, I decide to get into iOS application development. More likely than not, I'll have to buy a second computer. How is one supposed to know, before buying a computer, that years later he'll want to get into iOS application development?
I recently bought an ipad2, and I was shocked at the fact that there doesn't really exist a free app for most of the common things one expects to do with a computer or computer-like device.
And since the majority of these apps don't work, or don't do what they say it will do, with absolutely no possibility of a refund, well...
the gamble isn't for the developers. it's for the consumers.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Most web hosts include SSL, online shop, etc all for free. Try Bluehost which does all these and more for $6/month. The online card processors take around 3%. However some have a set fee plus percentage, eg Paypal takes 20p + 3.4% which will take it up to a whopping 23.4% on a 99p app, almost Apple proportions.
Apple and Android Market both take 30% which is a massive cut of the profits. With Apple you are pretty screwed, but there are plenty of Android apps where you Paypal the author the fee and he sends a reg code. If it's a fun app and any profit is a nice bonus then probably best go with the default stores, but if there are any development costs and the price is non-trivial then it is probably worth by-passing.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Now industry has found a way to source its optimal preferred resource - adept programmers with no common sense.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Every new company start up -exactly what writing apps is- is a risk.
So how does one mitigate the risk? One might choose to try to mitigate the risk by producing a quality product and marketing it as best one can, in hopes of recovering the initial investment. But as the article points out, this isn't always enough. How are startups in general unlike a casino?
People thought the magical Apple App Store was somehow a market that defied typical market behaviors only to realize that *gasp* it operates just like any market. To be fair to people however, perhaps it's more that people thought the Apple App Store would operate more like a small and limited market, not realizing the sheer size and scale of the Apple App Store means that they're competing with millions, not hundreds or even thousands of other applications. In other words, they didn't fully realize the sheer scale of the competition they faced and understand the implications to their business models.
Except using a self-signed cert is as useful as no cert at all. The typical customer is not going to call you to compare the keys to verify that the self-signed cert is legit.
...just because you've made the game you've always wanted to play does not mean that it will necessarily fail in the app store! Also, don't forget that a good product is just as important as marketing. Most naive, wide-eyed folks assume it's all marketing for success.
welcome to the real world. The case has always been that there are far more applications than could be consumed. Just because you can write a piece of software doesn't not mean that it will be a commercial success. It's the same with Android, it's was the same 20 years ago when I started writting shareware. It's a hobby! to believe that you are going to make money out of it, is fooling yourself.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Out of thousand apps that do the same, which one do you choose?
When there are hundreds of thousands apps, it's not about quality as much as about getting into a spotlight. "cut the rope" is much more entertaining than "angry birds", but the latter sells much better.
Every time I am buying an app from an appstore, it's like gambling. There is limited information, no video, to trial, one just hopes the app does what is says, buys it, and can never return it. If the app is an obvious, shameless scam, then maybe, if you are willing to invest loads of time to contact Apple, you might just get your money back. I have at least 10 apps, that I would never buy if I could saw them in advance.
The "App Store lottery". That's what I keep reading on developer forums. But except for buying a ticket you have to work really hard creating an app or game.
I hope to hit the jackpot with my newest app called Acoustic Ruler Pro which lets you measure distances of up to 25 meters (82 feet) by clocking the time delay of the emitted sound waves.
Here are two short videos showing what the app can do: http://iqtainment.wordpress.com/acoustic-ruler/.
No shit, Sherlock. Every app/startup/thing in the world is a gamble. Casinos just expose the fact that you're gambling and allow for finite numbers of your odds of winning. In the real world, the numbers are generally just guesses, like a stock market. Sometimes you work hard and get nothing in return. Sometimes, you don't work at all and get everything in return. I'm pretty sure that the "Apple Heroin" they speak of it just cash, piles of cash shot directly in the arm.
RoyaleA
Not the first time they publish upper nonsense. First, you don't just make up words and then claim they are already established. Dishonesty.
Aside from the (few, yes it's a lottery in that regard) filthy-rich developers, there are also quite a few who aren't filthy rich, but they make a living. I don't call that "losing out". A friend of mine is one of them, and I have maybe 20 more people like him in my extended circles.
Like every business, people fail. In sum total, the App Store seems to be a place where a small developer can still get his stuff sold - contrary to brick&mortar shops. The App Store is a big equalizer. Sure the big names can spend advertisement money outside, but in the App Store, they're the same as everyone else. And that gives small competition a fighting chance, which translates into a job that feeds the family for quite a few.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
My circa 2007 MacBook
In circa 2007, what convinced you to buy a MacBook instead of a Dell, HP, or Acer?
Isn't what you're describing here really just something that affects every computing platform ever developed, and is thus part and parcel of participating in the act of software creation
It appears everybody but Apple makes tools available for Windows or Linux or both. So a developer can keep current by buying the latest Dell, HP, Acer, or even a local white box brand. Apple, on the other hand, requires developers to buy its computer in order to develop applications for its device.
That's how capitalism works. That's the reason why 5% get 72% of everything in america, and the rest 85% live with the false hope of getting into the top 5% while they continue their lives by taking only 15% from the economy.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Read radical news here
Develop for Android, for example.
Apple isn't the reason you are a failure.
Most devs make crap apps, there's a glut of useless apps, if you consider the platform and what it is likely to be used for there are really few apps that you need or would want to use on a device with the physical size of a phone.
There are plenty of games if you're into games, but only a relative handful of useful applications that are well written, so who ever gets their "useful" app out first and catches the "word of mouth" market wins.
Honestly, I only need or can use 1 fart app, yet there are dozens.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Apple is cutting out middlemen. That's technology and progress.
You don't see many milkmen around anymore, do you?
I've read comments about hating the hobbyist apps and general floatsam in the app store yet in the very next breath they're beating their chest over the number of apps on their perspective platform. When most smartphones without enterprise apps would be served by 10-25K apps without duplicates the apple & android stores are boasting close to millions of apps. Very clearly Apple likes the floatsam to pay 100 dollars to essentially break even or make a small profit. The app stores are less like department stores and more like sweat shops. The casino term is accurate for the business model, play upon the greed and naivety of developers and make a profit on them either way.
The so-called capitalists if they weren't so caught up in their own circle jerk of resentment and egotism would recognize the stranglehold Apple and others have on the gatekeeping of this frontier. Substantially less than a plurality sideload another market so their ecosystem's place is where they know & go. This leads to economic dictatorships and an unbalanced system we're now beginning to see.
Or even worse, because self-signed certs create a lot of alerts in browsers and I even got my mail returned by a certain company when signed with a self-signed cert because it wasn't signed by a trusted CA. Sending them a plain email was ofcourse okay.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
The micropayments, while limited in scope, are significantly less expensive than full payments:
https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html
Making a successful application is about ability.
Make a good and fun game, and you will profit from it.
There is always of element of chance in any production.
You time the release of your solidly crafted action flick to avoid the blockbuster sequel --- only to be blindsided by the success of a competitor that seemed to come out of nowhere like Die Hard or The Pirates of the Caribbean.
Gog.com is stuffed with games that became classics in their genre --- but barely saw a dime in sales when launched. Even when you look back with 20-20 hindsight, it isn't always easy to see what went wrong.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you have a good app and some capital, figure out where you can generate buzz
Perhaps "casino" as the article puts it is overblown, but some chance remains: 1. who is lucky enough to come by enough capital to mount an appropriate marketing campaign and 2. whose marketing campaign ends up succeeding in generating enough buzz. Such risk due to chance is no different from any other startup, but if there's a formula, nobody's willing to share it.
Why else do you think that FarmVille outsells Harvest Moon?
I see three things that FarmVille has that, say, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody lacks: free to play for all Facebook users, runs on an existing PC without having to buy a console (and thus attracts new gamers who don't own one), and deployed using a platform that doesn't need applications to be permanently installed.
I have a friend who was looking at a promising career in academia (he was just starting out in grad school). He was a really smart guy and could probably have done pretty well as a researcher.
He opted to quit grad school and try to make it big developing iPhone apps, and when last I spoke with him it was his girlfriend who was paying his bills while he continued to hope people would buy his apps.
Palm trees and 8
Apple and Android Market both take 30% which is a massive cut of the profits.
Sorry, but this right here says that you do not know anything about anything.
First, it's a 30% cut of the gross. Profit is the money left after you subtract the cost of making the sale from the gross. It sounds like you think 100% of the price of an app is profit. This is naive.
Second, Apple runs its app store at slightly above breakeven (documented in their SEC filings). Running an app store is not free, especially Apple's style of walled-garden app store. They must employ a horde of app reviewers, support iOS developers, provide hosting, do credit card billing (lots of it on tiny transactions where the CC companies will eat them alive with per-transaction fees), and tons of other stuff.
Did you know that the developer's share of the gross in traditional brick & mortar software sales is horrible? IIRC figures under 20% are common, because in that business there's usually three middleman companies between the developer and customer taking cuts (publisher, distributor, store), and they all have lots of costs to cover. Real professional developers think the App Store's 30% / 70% split is amazing. Apple is taking care of all the hard work involved in distributing their app and collecting the money, and is basically charging breakeven prices for it. That's a sweet deal.
(What's in it for Apple? It turns out the purpose of the app store isn't to make money on its own, it's to get people to buy iOS devices. Hardware sales are where Apple makes its profits.)
With Apple you are pretty screwed, but there are plenty of Android apps where you Paypal the author the fee and he sends a reg code.
Google probably allows some sidestepping their system like this for two reasons. One, if they enforce it hardcore the cheapskates will just move to a non-Google app store, which Google is explicitly allowing. Two, to Google the main thing is to get more marketshare as long as it doesn't cost them too much. Apple is fundamentally a hardware company which uses software to make its hardware more attractive, but Google is fundamentally an advertising company. You, the end user, are the product in Google's view -- they're selling little slices of your time, in the form of advertising impressions, to their real customers, the companies who buy ads and search keywords and so forth. So they'll pay some money to get more end users to sell, as long as the expected return per user is greater than the price of acquiring that user.
There's no reason why a programmer can't learn to do his own marketing. It's not hard it just requires some work.
I'm willing to do work to learn marketing, graphics, or UI design. Where should I start? Does it require going back to college?
Google is your friend
Not always. Some concepts can be expressed using numerous distinct words. If I type a word into a search engine, the results will have those documents that contain the word, not documents that contain synonyms for that word. This phenomenon goes by "synonym problem" and numerous other names.
But you've established in previous posts that you can't afford a Mac
I can afford a Mac, but not everybody else can out of disposable income. Is it considered fallacious to argue a position that affects people other than myself?
Do you not research anything? You can install and test an iOS app on your own device without paying the $99. You have to be a registered developer which means filling out some forms with Apple. It's only when you distribute to other people that you have to pay.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You do know that the certificate is used to encrypt the connection, right? It doesn't matter if the costumer trusts a CA (most don't even know what it is) if it trusts you and your self signed certificate, it'll be enough for encryption and security.
In circa 2007, what convinced you to buy a MacBook instead of a Dell, HP, or Acer?
Well, it certainly wasn't for iPhone development
What I was getting at here is that in the iOS 2 days, people who had already chosen a Mac for some other reason had an advantage (there's the luck, the casino element) over people who had chosen a Dell, HP, or Acer. I'm trying to come up with good reasons to already own a suitable Mac that aren't related to iOS so that I can more fairly assume that someone would reasonably already own a Mac and thereby take the cost of a Mac out of the discussion.
iOS 2.0, the first iOS to even support third-party applications. There was no dev kit prior to this
Which is why in another post, I mentioned only the 3G, 3GS, 4, and 4S.
So, in other words you're backing down from your argument that you need to add in the cost of a new mobile device every few years, correct?
One still does, but a new mobile device every two years is still cheaper than a new mobile device every two years plus a specific brand of new PC every four.
Same answer I gave the other guy. A self-signed certificate can be used to encrypt the connection and add an extra layer of security. And since I trust myself, and I guess the costumer trusts me enough to send me money, this kind of certificate is more than enough. Most people have no idea of what a CA is anyways... And if I did get money, I can then get my "legitimate" certificate and pay for it, but only after I do make it.
You mention the 30% but don't seem to give it much weight despite it being a much larger cost than the $99 for a remotely successful app. Can I choose a store that has a higher up-front cost and lower percentage?
I've yet to see an app market that operates in any other way. Xbox indie games, android, etc along with the iphone all seem to be hit or miss. I think a lot of it is it's all cheap and while that should allow more opportunities I don't think it does. It makes people think most of it is junk so they only buy the things that are popular and proven.
That and there is a lot of shit that doesn't deserve money on those markets (especially Android) so is it no surprise a lot of people don't make money?
No, you can't. I tried it, but you clearly haven't. Good for you...
But if you do find how, please tell me. I've been dying to know this (and I have more than one friend with exactly the same person). It seems we are all stupid.
I repeat, without jailbreaking your phone you can't send anything to it without paying the 99$.
*exactly the same problem (obviously)
come from small business.
like, you know, fucking Apple
In casinos, your odds are the same as everyone else (obviously excluding games with some skill like blackjack.) That's gambling.
In capitalism, you take risk, which varies depending on what you bring to the table, good product, good marketing, etc.
Just remember, Steve Jobs sold his car to found Apple. Years later, he sold all his Apple shares to found Next. No risk, no reward.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Perhaps you should be the one researching. Your device requires a provisioning profile to run sideloaded applications, and you can only get a provisioning profile from the iOS Provisioning Portal, which you only get access to if you pay $99.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I don't know what anyone's crying about. This is how it works. You put your product out there and hope someone sees it and likes it. If it's good enough it will succeed. If not, oh well.
Everyone was deceived by Apple marketing and fanboys that the App store was some kind of gold mine. They flooded the media with headlines like "Game makes 20K" whilst neglecting to mentioning that it took six months, the author only received 14K and the costs to develop the game were 15K. The level of fallacious marketing made it difficult for most people to do real market research.
Also remember that Apple's App store is not a free market, it's a manipulated market. Apple picks what applications get advertised, can adjust rankings and outright reject or even remove an application after release. You are 100% on Apple for any success, and you have to give them 30% of everything before paying for your own costs.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I've been developing for the Android Market since May. There are some things to consider. One is some companies don't expect immediate success - lots of banks and such which may have been slow to get a website, have decided to get on smartphones and tablets now. The return for this might take years to come, but they have plenty of money. Why not do it now? They have the money and forecasts show they'll need it eventually, to stay competitive. Sometimes it is existing software. For Android, the Adobe PDF reader was really junky for the past few months. They just released an update, and now the app is much, much better. So they also are protecting their brand.
My capital costs, other than my labor time, are approaching $0.00. Well actually approaching $25.00 as that's what a lifetime Android Market account cost me. I have Admob ads in most of my apps, and average 5 cents a click. So after 500 clicks, I'm in the black. I can go on vacation for two weeks, and come back and see how much I have earned in the interim on Ad clicks. If I wanted to, I could sell apps, or do in-app sales and the like, and maybe I'll try that in the future.
This is something I enjoy doing. I do everything - I look over the entire market, I think up what to do, I write the code, I do the layout, I do the artwork (or get free for commercial ones from findicons.com, iconfinder.com etc.), I decide which user-requested features to implement and which to ignore. I decide whether to work on a new project or improve my existing projects. And then I get the money. Another thing is with work, in this young market, my check is increasing every month. Some of it is my improved products and some of it is people getting new Android devices for the first time.
Some of the things our community knows are relevant here I think. Release early, release often! Are there any Android apps which could load and search Microsoft Access databases on the phone, even if it had no network connection? There wasn't back in June. There still is not one as far as I know other than mine - Panacea Database. I didn't even have to do the Access-specific work, there was a LGPL license library out there I used called Jackcess. My first release took four days - all it did was load the database and iterate through the table rows. You couldn't even iterate backwards, and users said it then looked like junk on smaller phones. But in terms of competition, only one app came close, and for some things (free for an unlimited time, able to handle Access without needing to install a desktop app), it had no competition. Now, 1500 active users later, I have made a lot of improvements, many suggested by users. Which is another thing known by our community - listen to the users, and with a little bit of discrimination, let them have a large hand in determining the roadmap.
Panacea Database was really just an experiment to see if I could successfully port a popular open source Java library to Android. The experiment was an all-around success: I ported it, I sent patches back to the library which helped improve its Access 2010 usage (actually the lead developer took my patch and improved it even more), and lots of users are happy they can do what they want on their Android phones and tablets, and I'm making money on ads. And - I'm helping, in a very small way, an open source Linux platform be more useful. It's a small effort, but combined with a lot of other people like me, it has an effect. The users make out, the library makes out, Admob makes out, Google makes out, the manufacturers make out, the carriers make out, and I make out.
So the map seems pretty open to me. As the Cathedral and Bazaar says, whether its open source or not, scratch your own itch. Think what you'd like to see that is not on Android - or not on it in the way you want. Will people be able to find your app? There's 2 or 3 popular file managers, and those apps are easily findable by searching for file explorer or file manager or whatever. Will your app be as eas
Many people will start-up their own blog/websites/e-commerce a few will be wildly successful with little capital expense, a few will be wildly successful with a lot of capital expenses, the vast majority will be "failures."
While we can talk about hosting, downloading, bill handling, etc from the App Store the real value Apple provides small developers is Trust.
The consumer knows giving their credit card info to the App Store is secure, some guy's website could just as much be a front for the Russian Mafia as a ernest indie programmer. The consumer knows the App was tested by apple therefore won't f*ck up their iphone/ipad. They know the App store won't let them buy something that's incompatible with their phone. And finally they know if there's any problem, Apple will have their back.
First, it's a 30% cut of the gross. Profit is the money left after you subtract the cost of making the sale from the gross. It sounds like you think 100% of the price of an app is profit. This is naive.
The overheads are negligible in digital distribution. Your major costs are software development, advertising, followed by the cut the merchant takes from payments.
Second, Apple runs its app store at slightly above breakeven (documented in their SEC filings)
Is that another way of saying it makes a small profit?
They must employ a horde of app reviewers - doesn't help me, I can write my own detailed description of what the app does and provide screenshots
support iOS developers, - aren't you paying an extra $99/year for that even if you don't use it?
provide hosting - which is nothing
do credit card billing - so 2% out of the 30% accounted for
Real professional developers think the App Store's 30% / 70% split is amazing
They would have to be a little naive. They provide an expensive service, and there is nothing wrong with that if you had a choice of whether to use it or not. I use an accountant to do my accounts even though they are simple enough to do myself. I would rather spend the time writing software which I enjoy more. There will be developers that will take the easy option no matter how much Apple cream off.
Apple is taking care of all the hard work involved in distributing their app and collecting the money, and is basically charging breakeven prices for it. That's a sweet deal.
If they are taking a whopping 30% of all your money, have the largest app store in the world, and still can't make a profit... well they don't really care. They can blow it all internally on whatever they want because as you say they make huge margins selling cheap hardware for a high price.
Did you know that the developer's share of the gross in traditional brick & mortar software sales is horrible?
Yes I've had software published via traditional brick and mortar. The retailer really takes a huge cut but then they have high overheads too. The whole system is incredibly inefficient. Then came along this new medium called "the Internet".
If I published an app for $0.99 I would go with using the Apple and Android stores because, as you mentioned above, merchants take a larger cut on smaller payments. Anything over $5 and I would consider going my own route.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France