81–90 of 95 posts
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Lua is not allowed anymore.
False. See http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/11/apple_relaxes_...
That is hardly a blanco card for writing apps in Lua. Anyway - not my problem.
It's interesting that he's a big business guy. I would restate his title as: "the Apple store is for suckers or smallfry, if you're a big company." And, he's right. Big companies do take $50k+ to create mobile apps. Big companies do have much better things to do with their money; they can add far more value at greater scale. Of course, Jane developer might not be in the same boat. Another interesting confounding vari…
More to the point, I think if you read the rest of his blog, and take the perspective of some of the larger international companies, going for gold with the iPhone won't be the best business strategy.
Tomi has given some case studies of how MMS has worked for car dealers in Germany, and even campaign promoters in Australia. There is this under-exploited niche called mobile marketing, which relies on WAP, SMS, MMS, etc which could give pretty high ROI for large companies (eg: BMW)
Especially if you take a B2B perspective, what he says makes huge sense.
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It doesn't really make much difference, for the purposes of his analysis. Let's say a typical app costs $1500 to develop. If his other numbers are right, that typical app would take about 2.5 years to break even. His argument is that, on average, developing an iPhone app is, in itself, a fairly dismal economic proposition.
However, making, say, 80, spending time promoting them, and perhaps having a few of those be moderate successes may make this a much more viable option. I have a friend who's pursuing this option of making multiple apps (not sure he's to 80 yet, but will likely surpass that in the next year). I agree, the chance of one app being the runaway success that affords one an early retirement is pretty remote, but the tech p…
One of my friends met the developer of Air Horn. The #1 downloaded free app for endless weeks. He said the guy had over three hundred apps on the App Store until he hit it big. Really big.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/air-horn-free/id348184873?mt=...
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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.
So maybe developers are advertisers, but they are not buying ads, they are selling ad space in their app. The numbers for iPhone and iPod Touch devices from last September should be interesting to developers (http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/admob-is-approaching-100-mi...):
In September, AdMob served up 10.2 billion ad requests across 15,000 mobile Web sites and apps. About 28 percent of those were from iPhones and iPod Touches, with Android growing fast, making up another 7 percent. And if you look at only smartphones, Apple devices accounted for 48 percent of ad requests, with Android coming in second at 17 percent.
That's nearly 3 billion iPhone/iPod impressions in a month, just from AdMob. There are some key pieces of missing information - like the breakdown of the 15,000 request sources, especially web app versus native app - that would enable some more interesting analysis. But just saying that the iPhone reach is small doesn't really address the usage patterns of iPhone users versus other smartphone users.
Maybe you can't make decent money on ad-driven apps. I don't know. I haven't tried. The closest I can come to any information are a few anecdotes from usenet posts that claim anywhere from 10's of dollars to 100's of dollars a day in ad revenue. Not useful at all. But that doesn't make saying that iPhones are only 3% of the market a "full analysis."
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However, paid apps do get all of the purchases. The number of downloads doesn't matter, only income does.
Free apps have in app purchases, and ads. Some developers do very well off of free apps.
You do have a point with in app purchases, but I doubt that they would significantly skew the numbers - they would make them worse for developers of paid apps, in fact. Given the other optimistic decisions the article has when dealing with numbers, I think that ignoring in app purchases fits with it: it's a best case scenario for paid apps.
It would be quite interesting to see how much money has been made through in app purchases, though. Not merely anecdotes, but the percentage of free apps which have in app purchases, and the average/median income through in app purchases in those apps.
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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.
I'm not sure I understand the confrontational tone. So maybe developers are advertisers, but they are not buying ads, they are selling ad space in their app. The numbers for iPhone and iPod Touch devices from last September should be interesting to developers ( http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/admob-is-approaching-100-mi... ): In September, AdMob served up 10.2 billion ad requests across 15,000 mobile Web sites and a…
As a sole developer, you require not only the technical knowledge to complete the initial job of writing the software that attracts the traffic to generate revenue, but you also must rely on yourself to place and promote it adequately to have significant returns enough to cover both investments of time and energy.
"80 apps" is great news for a developer if a good percentage of them are yours, serving your ads. Otherwise, its at best 1/80th of a chance they are running your ads, but probably worse as each app is not created equal. If yours is a "killer app" that is use most often, its more than likely not ad-driven unless a guy likes playing iChess on the shitter.
All of the data you provided is great - but none of it ties to money paid. 10.2 billion ad requests means dick if there wasn't any money exchanging hands. You said yourself there's no definitive evidence of people making a lot from mobile app advertising, so I'm not sure what point you were defending in the first place.
I 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…
Care to share what those 3 things were you want to do but can't find apps for?
Why does the author assume normal distribution (bell curve) for apps' revenues? In reality app sales are similar to those of books and follow power law distribution. A few bestsellers will account for large chunk of overall app sales. Then there will be a very long tail of unprofitable apps. Therefore all of his numbers and his final conclusion are wrong. People do not write iPhone apps in order to achieve some sort…
Where are you getting the normal distribution information from? "This is the average, remember, it is not the median. The average skews too high because of the long tail. There are a few who make several millions, who distort the average number, so it is not true that half of iPhone App Developers earn more, and half less, than $3,050 per year." He references the long tail you mention, and describe exactly what you m…
The author spends much effort estimating an 'average' app income and costs. Talking about averages does not make any sense in case of power law distribution. He is using Gaussian approach which is a wrong model for given phenomena. Bringing skewness/kurtosis/whatever to the table doesn't help a thing since he has completely mis-classified the problem.
> That said, independent developers making money on that app store directly is a complete crap-shoot.
Can the same can be said about entrepreneurs in general? What is an 'average' income of an entrepreneur (including failed ones)? Is it worth it? Do you aim for this dismal income when you start a business?
Scalable business model is completely different animal from a non-scalable one (i.e. selling your personal time as a developer, consultant etc.). Quite a few developers expect from iPhone apps the same they are used to in their contracting/salaried careers.