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.

Comments

Profit?

[link-error]

That only seems to work when the government is paying you to install spyware.

Re:Profit?

[Em Adespoton]

I'm the CTO in a Chinese technology company. The government has never paid us to install spyware or anything else for that matter. ... Your own government couldn't even be bothered installing spyware on your computer, why would the Chinese government?

While you make some good points, I've repeatedly had to clean the same state-sponsored spyware off of laptops coming out of China. Now this is probably just done to computers that go through customs "screening" as they could be transporting "something" in and out of the country, but I've also had to deal with situations where foreign companies operating inside China have been required to install state-sponsored spyware on their computer systems.

You're right -- they don't care about individuals, just like the US doesn't. But in both cases, they highly desire the monitoring capability, so that automated systems can flag up potential issues. Neither China nor the US is the first country to do this -- the first state sponsored spyware I've seen originated in Germany, and was installed only on targeted computers. That was a long time ago, and since then, the barrier to install has dropped siginificantly, and the number of participants has grown to include most governments around the world.

When you're right, you're right.

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Re:When you're right, you're right.

[BarbaraHudson]

You missed my point - the gold rush was anyone with a mobile development kit and a few weeks/months could make a profit. Now, most mobile developers either make nothing or - for those who actually make money - an average of $34 a month. They'd be better off devoting that time to collecting refundable bottles.

Look at this ask slashdot

I'm a recent grad from a master's program in a potentially worthless social science field, and I've considered getting into iOS development. Several of my friends who were in similar situations after grad school have done so and are making a healthy living getting contract work. Although they had CS and Physics degrees going into iOS, neither had worked in objective C and both essentially went through a crash courses (either self-taught or through intensive classes) in order to get their first gigs. I have two questions. First, am I an idiot for thinking I can teach myself either objective C or Swift on my own without any academic CS background (I've tinkered in HTML, CSS, and C classes online with some success)? Second, if I'm not an idiot for attempting to learn either language, which should I concentrate on?

People still see mobile as a "fall-back" option that will probably provide them with enough income to pay the bills, when stats say this is already false, and will only get worse.

We're looking at a future where you need to be able to produce quality product for free and hang in long enough to actually get some users to pay for the add-ins, bonus levels, and unlocked features. Large developers backed by lots of capital and marketing budgets will continue to eat into the mobile app space. With a couple of million apps out there, new players need to have the money to be seen in the first place.

Let's get this out of the way...

[HerculesMO]

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.