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Chinese CEO Says "Free" Is the Right Price For Mobile Software
hackingbear writes Sheng Fu, CEO of Cheetah Mobile, a public Chinese mobile software company you probably haven't heard of, but whose products are among the top downloaded products in Android markets around the world, said that the intense competition of the Chinese market leads to products that can compete globally. Many recent university graduates are working in tech, all with their startups looking to find their place in the market, he said. Chinese companies saw the impact that piracy played in the PC software era, and China's mobile companies grew up knowing they would need to make money without getting consumers to open their wallets. "Chinese companies are so good at making free but high-quality products," he said. Sounds like we have a good race to the bottom.
You must defeat Sheng Fu to stand a chance!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
That only seems to work when the government is paying you to install spyware.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
What will they collect from you besides you money? How can I trust that what they do collect from me will be what I'm willing to give?
I've been saying that the gold rush for mobile development is ended, but that's been met with derision and unbelief. Cost is always an important factor.
Beta tapes cost more than VHS: VHS, though inferior, won.
Early Apple computers cost more than early PCs. PCs won.
There are plenty more examples where people will settle for cheap over expensive. Apps are just another one - once people are in the habit of not paying for an app, you'd better be in the top 0.1% of apps to justify getting paid.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Okay I give up. I clicked through all the links, all the links from the links and read all those articles. Nowhere does it explain or even allude to a business model. Is this that 'mindshare' bullshit again? I don't know, this Re/code site is apparently affiliated with CNBC and from clicking on a few other articles feels just as mindless and worthless as CNBC. How do they monetize Battery Doctor, Clean Master and Photo Grid? Do they have ads?
"Chinese companies are so good at making free but high-quality products," ...
If these companies are so good, where are some of their "high-quality" products?
Well, sure I'm sure the CEO of a Chinese software company who's business model is to release free software would say that.
Chinese companies saw the impact that piracy played in the PC software era
What impact? Hasn't it for a long time been known that no one loses anything if you just make a copy.
Paid? Then it's not free.
The add-ins are not. The app itself is.
And won't people crack it or get around measures in the same way people do for everything?
Most people do not. Do you really think the average smartphone user is going to be invest hours away to thinker and bypass such measures just to avoid paying $0.99 (the average price of an upgrade/add-in)? Most people, even tech savvy ones do not.
The sheer scale of the market makes it a number game. It doesn't matter if some people bypass the measures. There are potentially millions who do not, and of which a small fraction might pay for the upgrade. A small fraction of a very large number might still be large enough to get your ROI back. That is how it works.
You the consumer will be the product and your data will be mined and sold to the highest bidder.
Android is really NOT free.
Plain vanilla (and useless) Android is free.
If you have the Google Play services including the Store and Music, then you are charged to use those.
In comparison and somewhat ironically, Windows is completely free for devices under 8", including all the services and store. And with new OEMs now pushing that as well (since they made it so Windows can run on exact same Android hardware), perhaps we will see some competition to Android on the OEM side. Or not. Either way, the point is that Android is not really free.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. You initially get your app for free. After that you will be bugged with advertisements. Alternatively, your ass will be datamined.
They are "So Good". In China. Just when I thought I heard them all.
So Good.
Because businesses don't need to make money and development teams don't need to be paid.
I can't see how his logic works.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
That's funny to hear/read, because I just uninstalled all Cheetah Mobile apps from my Android phone.
I don't know about spyware, but with apps at least you don't have to worry about lead or melamine.
I don't know, but their AntiVirus software looks reliable and trustworthy... http://www.cmcm.com/en-us/cm-s...
Free mobile apps make money from ads and from freemium sales. These are commercial products and are not open source. Claiming the apps are "free" is good marketing.
Nothing is free. I'd rather be upfront, and pay at the front end, instead of having to pay bits later, which usually costs more than the whole.
Chinese CEO?
How'd you like it if a headline said: "American CEO says ..." rather than state which CEO and of which company?
It's like a headline that says "African man says ..."
(Yes, yes, I know the summary has the information).
Beetle B.
Just like the cost of Linux?
It seems pretty "no duh" and uncontroversial. By far, the most valuable application on my handheld is the web browser. That was gratis and there are several other gratis competitors. Distant second places are the email client, camera, phone. Most of those are the same situation. I really can't imagine that there would ever be a mobile application that I would ever spend "extra" money on. (To be fair, some of the money I spent on the hardware purchase might have ended up funding some of the software. I don't even know.)
Which isn't to say software isn't ever worth spending money on at all, but when it comes to software that you can really do much with, that's almost always going to be desktop (the only real exception being server). Like, some people are really convinced that Photoshop is worth paying for, as opposed to Gimp. But even if you're in that group, would you pay even a single dollar for "Mobile Photoshop?" As if!
Or as the rest of us like to say, stolen apps.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I don't have enough time to really dig into this, but a couple of different things might be going on here.
1) They may offer reduced functionality apps for free and you can pay to get more features. Nothing unusual there.
2) They have a business product line and I'm guessing that none of that is free, so it may be that individuals use their stuff for free and businesses pay.
It could also be that they are insanely managed and they're giving the store away to just get customers using them, but they seem to have a real revenue stream so I discount this without eliminating it.
I run non-free Android on my phone, but the only thing missing in vanilla Android that I would really ever miss on it, is Google Maps. There is nothing else, which isn't in the truly-free vanilla Android, that isn't trivially replaceable with something as good or nearly as good (e.g. Firefox is a reasonably decent replacement for Chrome). If Google Play were suddenly uninstalled, it would be months before I would even notice.
I also have a Chinese tablet with truly-free vanilla Android. It doesn't have Google Play. It gets used all the time. It's about as good as any other tablet, except that it's a little sluggish (very cheap hardware).
You're just plain wrong about it being useless without the non-free parts. I don't know who started this weird counter-reality attitude about the "necessity" of Google's non-free stuff, but anytime someone goes to the strained effort of trying to keep that meme limping along, I know they are either drinking the Google kool-aide or they work at Google. Stop whoring for them by telling people they need the non-free stuff. It's a lie, and you're hurting the users with it, since it discourages them from trying out free Android. The ones who bother, though, will find out about the lie. Do you really want them to remember your name after they find out you misled them?
If you're one of those people who hasn't tried free Android yet (maybe it was some other liar, who got to you), give it a shot. Later, I hope you "thank" the dishonest piece of shit who hid the truth from you.
If you put all the good stuff behind a paywall, it's not free.
Why exactly should grandparent owe you an answer?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Do you really think the average smartphone user is going to be invest hours away to thinker and bypass such measures just to avoid paying $0.99 (the average price of an upgrade/add-in)? Most people, even tech savvy ones do not.
Unless they're middle or high school students who are forbidden to work on account of age. Or unless they live in a country whose currency has an unfavorable exchange rate with the USD.
Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.