Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 90 posts

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#71

Post by kumarm »

patmcguire wrote: post #57

There was a good glib observation I saw today: "Monument Valley costs $6 less than it's own soundtrack. That’s how dysfunctional app pricing is." https://twitter.com/gregmaletic/status/493430279122350080 It really can't continue like this. What comes after, who knows.

Thats not a fair argument. It appears soundtrack has less than 1K downloads where Game has around Million downloads (Approximation based on number of ratings).

So it appears to me Soundtrack generated 10K where as Game Generated 3M.

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#72

Post by watwut »

patmcguire wrote: post #57

There was a good glib observation I saw today: "Monument Valley costs $6 less than it's own soundtrack. That’s how dysfunctional app pricing is." https://twitter.com/gregmaletic/status/493430279122350080 It really can't continue like this. What comes after, who knows.

Just because one like the soundtrack does not mean one wants to play the game.

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#73

Post by fulafel »

gregpilling wrote: post #22

from the PDF (downloadable): "Game design is a highly creative art that takes a lot of practice. Angry Birds was creator Rovio’s 52nd title. It is therefore not surprising to find that those who have shipped a lot of game titles are the most successful. The 3% of mobile game developers who have shipped 50+ titles are nearly 9 times as likely to be earning over $50k per app per month than the 62% who have only shipped…

They started on mobile games way before iOS or app stores though. And millionaire family for funding. And they did AB as a side project while doing many other games for pay for other publishers. And AB didn't get a anywhere in the asp store at first, picked up months later due to marketing tricks & luck & relatively early days of iOS games.

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#74

Post by lifeisstillgood »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #60
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you more on this - I assumed winphone would be so limp in the market that no one would develop for it, leading to the big wins for the few that bothered. I am assuming I have been proven wrong by the market. But would like to know

There are a handful that seem to get touted as the poster children for viable Windows app developers. Atley Hunter who has 500+ apps in the ecosystem (currently all phone targeted but a recent podcast mentioned he was moving to Universal development so that they can run on Win 8 too), he looks for trends (like "Don't tap the white tile" type stuff) and then implements them in the Windows Phone store. Then there is Ru…

Sounds very much like the German brothers who go round making French German Spanish language versions of bi popular sites. Nothing particularly wrong but just odd the innovation stays on the iOS / android areas

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#75

Post by cheese1756 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #65
Donzo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that I am getting down voted for my sentiments, so perhaps I should better explain my experience. I programmed an app that was featured in several publications including the Washington Post and coverage by one of the writers for the Guardian. These favorable reviews led to a handful of sales. If this were a web app, these valuable links would have given my product a real boost. With the app store, there's almos…

Did you have a website to promote your app? Edit to add: no judgment implied; I'm just curious.

I thought the same thing. The app store page shouldn't be the be-all and the end-all for discovery. Instead, it should be the last step in the marketing process. A promotional website, along with using mailing lists and social media as funnels, would go a long way.

Web apps don't hope that people stumble across them because there happens to be a centralized directory. The same active promotion used for web apps should take place for mobile apps.

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#77

Post by x0x0 »

chasing wrote: post #28

Am I to understand from those charts that over 25% of iOS apps make more than $5,000 per month? That sounds like great odds to me! Especially given the amount of garbage in the App Store.

Bill Gates walks into a bar. The average patron is worth more than $1B.

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#78

Post by rahimnathwani »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #74
jbigelow76 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a handful that seem to get touted as the poster children for viable Windows app developers. Atley Hunter who has 500+ apps in the ecosystem (currently all phone targeted but a recent podcast mentioned he was moving to Universal development so that they can run on Win 8 too), he looks for trends (like "Don't tap the white tile" type stuff) and then implements them in the Windows Phone store. Then there is Ru…

Sounds very much like the German brothers who go round making French German Spanish language versions of bi popular sites. Nothing particularly wrong but just odd the innovation stays on the iOS / android areas

Samwer?

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#79

Post by rahimnathwani »

megablast wrote: post #69
Bamafan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so great if it took 10 employees to create it.

The top 25% of apps did not take 10 employees to create them, unless there are 2.5 million iOS app developers running around.

A team isn't always 100% developers.

Re: The Majority of Today’s App Businesses Are Not Sustainable

#80

Post by [deleted] »

snowwrestler wrote: post #65
Donzo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that I am getting down voted for my sentiments, so perhaps I should better explain my experience. I programmed an app that was featured in several publications including the Washington Post and coverage by one of the writers for the Guardian. These favorable reviews led to a handful of sales. If this were a web app, these valuable links would have given my product a real boost. With the app store, there's almos…

Did you have a website to promote your app? Edit to add: no judgment implied; I'm just curious.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN