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Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#12I think in addition to hosting/distribution costs, a reason they charge an annual fee is to weed out spammers, which I think is a good idea. The fee is low enough (equivalent to about 2 cups of coffee per month) that any serious developer should have no problem paying it.
Also, I don't want to sound hokey but... $99 might be low enough for your definition of a "serious developer" but it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. I can make, host and distribute a website for $0 because nobody owns that ecosystem, and big companies like Github and Heroku think it's worth their while to offer free hosting and distribution to s…
> it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example.
These are probably not their target audience then.
> they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to.
iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. That's not even remotely close to a monopoly.
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does the annual fee weed out spammers exactly? Are there examples on Android of the kind of spam apps you're worried about?
It's much harder for them to be anonymous when they had to get their credit card out.
I'm not trying to be combative but... doesn't Google's one-time fee to make an account do that just as effectively? Or an annual $10 fee, or whatever?
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, I don't want to sound hokey but... $99 might be low enough for your definition of a "serious developer" but it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. I can make, host and distribute a website for $0 because nobody owns that ecosystem, and big companies like Github and Heroku think it's worth their while to offer free hosting and distribution to s…
> it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. These are probably not their target audience then. > they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to. iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. That's not even remotely close to a monopoly.
> iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google.
that's worldwide, in the U.S. they're at 45%. And it's not a traditional duopoly in that there's huge lock-in -- I can buy Coke one day and switch to Pepsi the next (or whatever), but once a customer is on a particular phone they're locked into that platform's app store. So, yeah, I think they're exercising monopolistic pricing when selling access to their app-store.
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, I don't want to sound hokey but... $99 might be low enough for your definition of a "serious developer" but it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. I can make, host and distribute a website for $0 because nobody owns that ecosystem, and big companies like Github and Heroku think it's worth their while to offer free hosting and distribution to s…
> it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. These are probably not their target audience then. > they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to. iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. That's not even remotely close to a monopoly.
also.. for the record, my main complaint is that they're kicking off apps that they've already approved if the developer doesn't continue to pay $99 every year. I don't see how that's justified by weeding out spammers or their target audience for developers or anything else.
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#16Would be cool if there was a single publisher on the app store who devs could dump their free apps with and would then aggregate/split the costs between all the devs involved. $99 might be steep, but $10? Sure.
Yeah, definitely, $10 a year I would pay without complaint.
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. These are probably not their target audience then. > they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to. iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. That's not even remotely close to a monopoly.
> iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. that's worldwide, in the U.S. they're at 45%. And it's not a traditional duopoly in that there's huge lock-in -- I can buy Coke one day and switch to Pepsi the next (or whatever), but once a customer is on a particular phone they're locked into that platform's app store. So, yeah, I think they're exercising monopolistic pricing when selling access…
Why does a higher market share in the US have any significance in this discussion? According to [1] the US only accounts for about 10% of the global smartphone market. As an Australian, I couldn't care less about their US market share.
And even if we go by 45%, that's still not close to a monopoly. You're not by any means forced to publish apps on their app store.
[1] https://www.countriestoday.com/smartphone-users-by-country/
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. These are probably not their target audience then. > they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to. iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. That's not even remotely close to a monopoly.
also.. for the record, my main complaint is that they're kicking off apps that they've already approved if the developer doesn't continue to pay $99 every year. I don't see how that's justified by weeding out spammers or their target audience for developers or anything else.
As an end user, I would expect apps to be updated at least as frequently as once a year, given that they release major OS upgrades and new hardware each year. Frankly, if you can't be bothered to update your apps, I'd rather not see them in the store. Apple is optimising for user experience here, and developers who don’t keep their apps up to date for the best user experience clearly isn’t Apple’s top priority.
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#19What are the apps by the way? In the pre-Apple days, mobile app makers on J2ME, BREW, Symbian etc had to give up to 70 percent to marketplaces and spend potentially up to 50 thousand dollars or more to code sign each app across multiple device types. $99 for code signing all the individual developers apps across all devices and publishing it was unheard of at the time and truly shocking compared to the old paradigm.…
I didn't want to look like I was hawking something so I didn't include a link but these are my apps: https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri-bram/id1222415460 That's interesting, about the pre-Apple days, I didn't know that. Do you know how/why Google manages at $0 per year though (with a $25 one-off fee), while Apple charges $99 per year? It's really hard for me to believe that Apple's price would survive in any k…
Apple has always been a premium brand. And it is reflected in the “Apple tax” (Mac and $99/yr annual developer subscription). If you ever have the opportunity to attend an Apple organized developer event (WWDC usually), you will feel that they truly want to provide the technology, SDKs, and support to enable you and your team to build the best app experiences that you can.
For the equivalent experience that users now demand and expect on Android, it is usually much more difficult and nuanced to achieve.
Google has gotten better at treating developers with love, but it is probably not their main priority.
Re: Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store
#20Would be cool if there was a single publisher on the app store who devs could dump their free apps with and would then aggregate/split the costs between all the devs involved. $99 might be steep, but $10? Sure.
I’m not going to read the TOS for the $99 developer subscription, and, assuredly, sharing of accounts like this is probably prohibited.