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The 2014 Panic Report

panic.com

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Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#11

Post by richardwhiuk »

lordbusiness wrote: post #8
sedev wrote: post #6

I wince a little when I read the section titled "Low iOS revenue." The iOS App Store's race to the bottom on pricing (and the parallel problem in Androidville) are very hard on developers. Panic reports that their unit sales are nearly even on iOS and OS X - but that the revenue is on the far side of an 80-20 split, that they make more than four times the revenue from a desktop sale than from an iOS sale! Even if you…

Indeed. Increasingly I'm viewing iOS apps as value-add only, that is to say apps attached to a given service or other offering, designed to augment such a service. I am sure people will cite a zillion examples of businesses that make their living from iOS apps, but increasingly this appears more like winning the lotto, akin to 'making it' in Hollywood, than as a viable business model for all comers. The reliable way…

Agree. Almost all of the apps on my phone are basically value add only.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#12

Post by sedev »

lordbusiness wrote: post #8
sedev wrote: post #6

I wince a little when I read the section titled "Low iOS revenue." The iOS App Store's race to the bottom on pricing (and the parallel problem in Androidville) are very hard on developers. Panic reports that their unit sales are nearly even on iOS and OS X - but that the revenue is on the far side of an 80-20 split, that they make more than four times the revenue from a desktop sale than from an iOS sale! Even if you…

Indeed. Increasingly I'm viewing iOS apps as value-add only, that is to say apps attached to a given service or other offering, designed to augment such a service. I am sure people will cite a zillion examples of businesses that make their living from iOS apps, but increasingly this appears more like winning the lotto, akin to 'making it' in Hollywood, than as a viable business model for all comers. The reliable way…

I think I'm gonna start looking at it that way, since that's much more actionable than what I said.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#13

Post by beaumartinez »

paganel wrote: post #9
[deleted] wrote: post #5

[deleted]

> because trying to do SSH without an actual keyboard is really frustrating and no, I don't want to buy a keyboard for my iPad. A little OT, but reading your comment I remembered how I used to SSH to my home-server using my ex-wife's Nokia E71 sometimes around 2008-2009, when we were going out with friends and I was getting bored. That phone was pure genius, it had a nice keyboard, no need to purchase any SSH client,…

If only the Nokia of old were still around.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#14

Post by richardwhiuk »

paganel wrote: post #9
[deleted] wrote: post #5

[deleted]

> because trying to do SSH without an actual keyboard is really frustrating and no, I don't want to buy a keyboard for my iPad. A little OT, but reading your comment I remembered how I used to SSH to my home-server using my ex-wife's Nokia E71 sometimes around 2008-2009, when we were going out with friends and I was getting bored. That phone was pure genius, it had a nice keyboard, no need to purchase any SSH client,…

I've used SSH on mobile devices, on both iOS and Android, and I wouldn't describe either experience as pleasant - at best it felt like pulling teeth. This is mainly because of the small screen (80x25 would feel like a blessing on a phone) and the terrible keyboard.

Maybe a physical keyboard would be better, but I doubt it. On a desktop or a laptop I type in SSH just about as quick as I can think (sometimes faster :p). On a phone, it's way slower, and when I can type quick enough, the latency over wireless networks is slow enough to make it tiresome.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#15

Post by WoodenChair »

dmishe wrote: post #10
sedev wrote: post #6

I wince a little when I read the section titled "Low iOS revenue." The iOS App Store's race to the bottom on pricing (and the parallel problem in Androidville) are very hard on developers. Panic reports that their unit sales are nearly even on iOS and OS X - but that the revenue is on the far side of an 80-20 split, that they make more than four times the revenue from a desktop sale than from an iOS sale! Even if you…

Well, they price Coda Lite 1/5th the price of OSX version. So they get roughly 1/5h of the revenue. Math works out. They could try and price Coda iOS at $99, but Cabel is right — it's just not that important platform for dev tools, and I don't see people paying that much. Now if those two were incredibly (and equally) valuable products on both platforms AND priced the same AND there was much less revenue from iOS, th…

What this analysis is missing, is that there are multiple times more iOS users (and therefore potential customers) than there are Mac Users. They set a lower price on iOS with a hope for making it up in unit volume. However, they're realizing now that unit volume being similar to Mac, prices must go up. I agree it's not as valuable a platform as the Mac, but it's also probably not 1/5 as valuable.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#16

Post by statictype »

paganel wrote: post #9
[deleted] wrote: post #5

[deleted]

> because trying to do SSH without an actual keyboard is really frustrating and no, I don't want to buy a keyboard for my iPad. A little OT, but reading your comment I remembered how I used to SSH to my home-server using my ex-wife's Nokia E71 sometimes around 2008-2009, when we were going out with friends and I was getting bored. That phone was pure genius, it had a nice keyboard, no need to purchase any SSH client,…

The E71 was both great and maddening. The keyboard was good. Being ably to write Python on it was great. The music player and camera were junk though. Worse than the equivalent on many lower end phones.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#17

Post by themodelplumber »

lordbusiness wrote: post #8
sedev wrote: post #6

I wince a little when I read the section titled "Low iOS revenue." The iOS App Store's race to the bottom on pricing (and the parallel problem in Androidville) are very hard on developers. Panic reports that their unit sales are nearly even on iOS and OS X - but that the revenue is on the far side of an 80-20 split, that they make more than four times the revenue from a desktop sale than from an iOS sale! Even if you…

Indeed. Increasingly I'm viewing iOS apps as value-add only, that is to say apps attached to a given service or other offering, designed to augment such a service. I am sure people will cite a zillion examples of businesses that make their living from iOS apps, but increasingly this appears more like winning the lotto, akin to 'making it' in Hollywood, than as a viable business model for all comers. The reliable way…

You're right. Half of iOS developers and 64% of Android developers are living below the "App Poverty Line"--making less than $500 USD per app, per month.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/21/the-majority-of-todays-app-...

Several people (a consultant I hired and a few clients) have encouraged me to develop iOS apps. This was based on anecdata, but I eventually convinced a client to hire me to build a simple one as a proof of concept. We found that interest in the app fizzled out fast and I learned that I didn't enjoy standalone business application development much. I didn't rule it out as a hobby though.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#18

Post by benologist »

I hope this is the year Panic upgrades Transmit to have a retry button for failed uploads - it's especially painful that entire syncs and batch uploads have to stop or be accepted as incomplete if a single file fails.

Re: The 2014 Panic Report

#19

Post by modfodder »

wwweston wrote: post #3

Perhaps the most interesting part for developers currently targeting or considering targeting Apple's App store: "We had a very long, very torturous situation with Status Board almost being pulled that we’ve never written up out of sensitivity to our relationship with Apple. I only mention it here because it proves that it is possible to fix these awkward rejection situations without Apple suffering negative PR in th…

I feel this is unfortunately the case with a lot of businesses (not to give Apple a pass here). A lot of problems get fixed quickly when the customer has a large enough online following (or is lucky for their story to go viral) to cause a negative pr.
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