I can't believe this guy because he claims that the iPhone 4 launch was a stumble.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/smartph...
What?
Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
61–70 of 95 posts
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#62My main issue with this article is that the author assumes that all developers operate equally. He averages the individuals who build apps in their spare time and might make thousands of dollars as 'extra' income, with the large app companies who spend tremendous resources on building apps that get high returns. When he crunches his numbers, he gets results that are probably very far from the actual reality of things…
He is an ex-executive. What does he know about software development?
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#63The analysis misses the point of why people get into mobile development.
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#64His proposition of doing SMS app because the Idol/whatnot had made hundreds of millions is misleading. The cost of doing a SMS app might be low but the app itself is an accessory of the real product, the game show. It takes tens to hundreds millions of product and marketing cost to make and run a show like Idol over years. You think a $35,000 developed SMS app can make that kind of money by itself?
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The numbers, assuming his inputs are reasonably accurate, still mean something - most people trying to make money selling iPhone apps don't make a great deal. It's easy to distinguish between apps that are trying to make money and apps that aren't - apps trying to make money are not free. The sort of filtering you want is next to impossible - you're asking that only the apps that are trying to make money but really m…
> [all] apps trying to make money are not free. No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. It remind…
I'd say your scenario represents a tiny segment (not 90% of paid apps). Most people who build apps for fun put it out for free. If they put a price on it, it's much less likely to be used. Where is the fun in that?
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [all] apps trying to make money are not free. No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. It remind…
I'd say your scenario represents a tiny segment (not 90% of paid apps). Most people who build apps for fun put it out for free. If they put a price on it, it's much less likely to be used. Where is the fun in that?
Well, I'd guess it represents a much larger segment than you guess. Neither of us has any data, nor does the article. So the only rational conclusion is to accept our ignorance, right?
Or at least one should carefully document every single wild guess being made when coming up with some numbers, and carefully identify them as very plausibly being very large sources of error (so that no readers mistakenly doubt that the numbers might be off by a factor of 10 and think it's actually based on hard data).
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you even read the entire post?
Yes, I did. What I was expecting to see for free apps was something along the lines of using, say, AdMob metrics ( http://metrics.admob.com/ ) and his estimate of the number of free apps to come up with some rough idea of what the average iPhone ad-driven app makes as revenue. That would have been more in line with the section of the post about paid apps. Simply saying that targeting an iDevice leaves out 97% of the…
As a developer trying to make money on an app through advertising - you're an advertiser.
Let me know how much money you make doing iPhone apps with AdMob. I'll be here.
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The numbers, assuming his inputs are reasonably accurate, still mean something - most people trying to make money selling iPhone apps don't make a great deal. It's easy to distinguish between apps that are trying to make money and apps that aren't - apps trying to make money are not free. The sort of filtering you want is next to impossible - you're asking that only the apps that are trying to make money but really m…
> [all] apps trying to make money are not free. No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. It remind…
No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money.
Nobody said they shouldn't be. The point is 'serious effort' vs anything else is not readily measurable. This is something you say, rather than something you do. 'Trying to make money' vs 'Not trying to make money' is measurable - if you're not trying to make money, you don't charge. If you charge, you are obviously trying to make money, even if it's very little money.
Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business.
The numbers are still useful, whatever their caveats and limitations. At the very least, they are more useful than non-numbers or numbers-that-ought-to-be-obtained-by-some-method-that-doesn't-actually-produce-measurable-numbers.
But the standards of science
I don't think there was any claim to reaching the 'standards of science'. It seems a little silly to bring them up, though - the author's sources and methods are well described. There's probably plenty of room to take issue there. But you can't trot out 'the standards of science' if your standard is some underivable set of data that just happens to support your viewpoint.
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#69I thought it was already understood that the model of "create a $1 app and sell 10k of them per month" was long over. The App store is still a relatively new market, so people will continue to learn how to be successful on it. I just got an iPad and started using the App store for the first time in my life and guess what? Out of the 5 things I wanted to use the pad for, 3 of them didn't exist at all. There is plenty…
I'm also curious as to what you wanted to see. When I picked up my friend's iPad (a month or two ago) I struggled to find a good finance app that actually gave good charting and numbers for stock market options and commodity futures. I know I'm not the only one who would be interested in that AND I know that those of us who are have fairly deep pockets.
Re: Full Analysis of iPhone Economics: Bad News?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [all] apps trying to make money are not free. No, 3 of my 4 apps are paid, even though I'm not making a serious effort to make money. Why shouldn't they be? I don't mind making a little money. Just because filtering the numbers to get useful results is infeasible doesn't mean we should pretend averages across the entire store mean anything for a person who sets out to build an app store oriented business. It remind…
I'd say your scenario represents a tiny segment (not 90% of paid apps). Most people who build apps for fun put it out for free. If they put a price on it, it's much less likely to be used. Where is the fun in that?
Introverts, remember. The fun is making the app, seeing it with a price tag on it is just a bonus. And it's so easy to put a price tag on, there's no reason not to. It might even cover the developer fees.