Good point, but a couple of other things should be considered. If 300,000 apps is a fact, how many devs are there? I doubt it's 300,000. I also doubt that you could say the top 200 apps generated revenue the way that Angry Birds did.
If the 80/20 rule applies to this scenario, and I'm not saying that it does, of the 300,000 apps, 20%, or 60,000 are generating 80%, or $800 million in revenue. Of course it won't be a flat lined division of the $800 million between 60,000 apps, but this isn't really even the issue we're trying to get to. Developers are not locked into producing just one app - they can have two, twenty, two hundred, two thousand, etc. There are going to be some developers who have multiple successful (and maybe even wildly successful) apps generating big numbers, but others doing very little - again following the typical 80/20 rule (if it plays out this way).
I'm not sure it really matters which platform/os they're writing for - good apps that get more eyeballs on them have a better shot of making money, but following the 80/20 scenario - they'll have just a few apps generating most of the revenue and the remainder doing little or costing them money - again regardless of the platform/os.
I've always thought of Apple vs Android as being similar to the Target vs Walmart comparison. They both sell many of the same basic items (in some cases even the same brands), but the user experience at Target has generally been accepted as the better experience. Part of that is design centric, but Target is also targeting a different audience than Walmart is - not better or worse, but different. I've sold product to both places and there are benefits to both. I believe the same is true for the Apple/Android os businesses.
John
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I highlighted why that sort of thing happens a little while ago and why it doesn't really show the App Store as the right way of doing things:
Apple said they have paid out $1b to developers but we don't know the revenue distribution. The majority of that seems to go to people who were featured on the front page.
"the revenue distribution isn?t flat, so the big winners will make a lot of money and most apps will probably make next to nothing, suggesting that most apps as a business venture would actually lose money"
Angry Birds made $8m in revenue alone. If the top 200 apps receive similar amounts, there's your $1b and not much for the other 300,000+ apps.
Apple has certainly done a lot of things right and no one else has any better implementation but to make it fair for all developers to be judged by their work and not by how people have found the app, Apple should improve discoverability.
If somebody is buying a $250 phone (w/o contract) or under a BOGO offer they are not gonna pay more than $1 for a game, especially if they are not sure if the app/game runs on their budget devices well. Just my two cents.
Where I'm from, iPhone doesn't cost any more than any other smart phone.
The argument of being in "control" has been beaten like a rented mule.
The reason users enjoy the iPhone is that they don't mind (or don't care) about relinquishing low-level control to Apple. iPhone users have better things to do than to have absolute control and micromanage everything about their smartphone. They don't want to have to worry about whether an app is malicious. I for one am relieved that a company like Apple is undertaking a herculean effort to remove as much of the mundane tasks from their users. They recognize the joe-consumer does not want to be a sys-admin in order to work their handsets.
The reason Android users enjoy their phone is because they do have absolute control of their handset, presuming they are proficient enough to root it, and continue installing whatever Android OS updates come along. Android is geek nirvana, hence the Terminator-like commercials.
The problem is that the manufacturers of Android handsets and the wireless providers have ZERO incentive to continue providing 6-month-old handsets with updated OS upgrades. Manufacturers only make money on new handsets. Wireless folks want to sell a new phone to lock the users into another contract. Only the technically-proficient have the time to waste figuring a way around it. For everyone else, they simply buy a new handset, or attempt to do an over-the-air update for those few handsets that allow it and the result is they ruin their phone due to lousy firmware. The tech-tards lambast regular users as being too stupid for their inability to figure out their phones on a technical level, when the reality is they simply do not want to deal with it.
Keep up the good work Apple. Thank goodness that there are more "regular" users than the technical ones that think they know better what everyone else wants.
If you're going to discuss "regular" phone users, you should at least get the description right. Most regular users don't care or expect their phone to have OS updates. They're not sitting around wondering whether the apps in their phone's respective app store is malicious or not. Really, they expect their phone to stay the same until their two years are up and they get a new phone.
There are 5 Android users in my family: Two nieces (around 14 and 17 in age), my nephew (age 19), and my brother (44) and his wife (44). The closest to a tech geek in that group is my nephew and I'm not even sure if he would understand what "rooting" the phone is for or how to do it. He's the only one I could imagine waiting anxiously for an OS update. I don't think any of those people have the same phone, yet all of them have no issues using them or acquiring apps. And I know it will come as a shock but they all seem to enjoy their phones.
There are tech geeks on both the Android and iPhone side of the fence. But those aren't the "regular" users of the phones.
Good point, but a couple of other things should be considered. If 300,000 apps is a fact, how many devs are there? I doubt it's 300,000. I also doubt that you could say the top 200 apps generated revenue the way that Angry Birds did.
That's right, there aren't 300k developers but there are still over 43,000 developers:
Even if 1,000 of them make a good amount from their apps, that's still leaving 42,000 developers out in the cold and some of them have great apps.
There was a set of data for a particular app online based on chart ranking and I made a graph of it here:
It's quite a steep fall-off as you get to position 70. Although the two factors go hand-in-hand which is why it's hard to draw conclusions form it and explains why it's an exponential curve.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmgregory1
good apps that get more eyeballs on them have a better shot of making money
The problem with that statement is 'good apps'. Apps don't have to be good to get more eyeballs. It's the same with movie theatres. Would anyone ever say that Avatar or Titanic were the best movies of all time? Probably not but they are the two highest grossing films of all time from the same director.
Apps get up the rank through publicity. For the publisher in the link in my last post, it was hitting an Italian market, which boosted the sales up a bit and then as soon as it got onto the front page, it sky-rocketed. This is how most ranking systems work including Google. If you appear anywhere after page 3 for certain keywords, your website will get next to no new visitors from that source.
I don't have the time to browse page by page through 50 lists of icons to see apps on the App Store and I can't tell the App Store the kinds of apps I want so I'm never going to find good apps. Plus I can't browse by rating so I can't filter out the junk. My App Store browsing is now once every couple of months and I just search for EA Games or Gameloft and that's it.
Occasionally you get big publishers making games like Chinatown Wars and Tomb Raider and the Guardian of Light, which are big franchises but how do they knock down apps that have been in the chart so long when they are taking all the publicity every single day? It's obvious to me why Angry Birds has stayed at number 1 for so long and it's because it's been at number 1 for so long. Then it gets blogged about everywhere and people read the blogs and buy it and it stays at number 1.
Like I said in the other thread, I think they need to put a time dampener on the charts so that the longer an app is in the charts, it acts as a detriment to its position. If people keep buying in such high volume that it counters this dampening then it deserves its place, otherwise a good deal of its popularity is because of its place in the chart.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Right on.
Not strictly true. The free version of Angry Birds for Android is ad-supported and on track to make $1m of revenue vs $8m on iOS, which I think has both and has had the app longer. I'd agree that you are likely to make less money on a popular app ad-supported but you could easily make more money from the ad-supported route.
Even if 1,000 of them make a good amount from their apps, that's still leaving 42,000 developers out in the cold and some of them have great apps.
Define "a good amount of money".
Earlier this year, I wrote a quick little app (took me about 4 hours and that included learning ObjC and developing apps in XCode). After Apple's cut, it brings in a steady $70 per month.
Take out the annual Developer Fee and that's about $750 in take-home revenue for 4 hours work.
That's the beauty of the App Store. You don't have to be a professional developer to make money. I investigated releasing to Android and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort.
Indeed, over 200,000 Apps have been written for Android. ISTM that many, many developers think that the viewpoint expressed above is naive. Instead, they realize that Android is THE place to be for developers.
Do you know something that hundreds of thousands of developers, including multibillion dollar powerhouses, don't realize?
Actually, I am an Android developer according to the fact I signed up and downloaded the dev kit, do I plan to ever develop an app for it, nope. How many active developers are there, that is the question. Even better Question is how many developers actually published an app that is more than a skinned web page.
Earlier this year, I wrote a quick little app (took me about 4 hours and that included learning ObjC and developing apps in XCode). After Apple's cut, it brings in a steady $70 per month.
Take out the annual Developer Fee and that's about $750 in take-home revenue for 4 hours work.
That's the beauty of the App Store. You don't have to be a professional developer to make money. I investigated releasing to Android and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort.
Well I think everyone or nearly everyone would agree that 750 per year isn't a "good amount of money".
It my be acceptable for you considering the time and effort it took, but no one is making a living off that amount of income.
I worked with a friend of mine who wanted to put one of my apps on Android. The amount of effort needed to just get a half- useful looking UI astonished me.
Yes, this really sucks even if you're a java dev used to the normal suck of java ui development. Worse, the UI enhancements from vendors can muck around with you.
Quote:
Android will be a success because Windows Mobile (prior to 7) sucks, they don't like RIM lock-in, and they don't like Apple lock-in. But that doesn't make it "good". It just makes it "passable".
What I think it *does* mean, however, is that the development community will coalesce around iOS, because the work is easier, and there is an actual chance you can get paid.
If somebody is buying a $250 phone (w/o contract) or under a BOGO offer they are not gonna pay more than $1 for a game, especially if they are not sure if the app/game runs on their budget devices well. Just my two cents.
There's no inherent correlation between the price of the phone and what a user would be willing to spend on apps. The simple fact is that Android handset manufacturers *can* sell devices at a much lower profit margin than Apple (or at least than Apple is willing to). If Apple sold iPhones two for the price of one, or gave them away for free through promotions, would you turn it down? Certainly not.
I had an iPhone for 2 years, which I paid full price for ($200 with contract I think). I now have an Android that I picked up on promotion for $0 with a 2 year contract. There's no difference between my likelihood of purchasing apps on Android than there was on the iPhone.
Android may, in fact, be a more difficult platform to develop for, but the user base will be larger, if it's not already, and the development tools and resources will improve, and both of these facts will make Android an increasingly attractive platform for developers.
You can dream up all sorts of reasons why developers will shun Android, but that doesn't mean they will.
Well I think everyone or nearly everyone would agree that 750 per year isn't a "good amount of money".
It my be acceptable for you considering the time and effort it took, but no one is making a living off that amount of income.
True, but "good amount of money" being equivalent to "making a living" is your definition, not mine. To me, $750 means a little extra to spend on the family and a bump up in our savings.
The point I was going for is that the Apple Ecosystem (both development and devices) enables non-professionals a low entry point to create and release applications.
For every "Angry Birds", there are a number of non-professional developers who put together useful applications with little effort. They will never break the top 10 (or top 10000) lists, but by making it easy to earn money (even small amounts), it encourages a larger community of active "developers" and hence, a more robust App Store. Case in point, the App Store has my app, while the Android Marketplace does not.
Vesterbacka said "paid content just doesn?t work on Android." And that is no surprise at all. Google wants it that way.
Android, the software, is free. The software isn't Google's product. Its users' eyeballs on ads and clickthroughs to their advertisers' products are what Google is selling. That's Google's business model, plain and simple.
That's right. Over 90% of Google revenue comes from a highly proprietary, completely closed system known as Google AdWords.
Basically, Google is the world's largest ad agency.
They want people to look at ads because that's what they sell.
Meaning if they are counting people who have downloaded the kit as developers, then their numbers are highly inflated
And the same is equally possible on iOS - I'm sure Apple counts developers by how many have signed up as a developer, not by how many have actually released apps.
Come on guys, let's not be so blindly biased here.
The only thing I would disagree with here - I totally agree as a developer that iOS is far better than Android - is whether ads are better than money upfront or not. I imagine for most companies, and products, it isn't. however for the top companies it may be. The question is how many ads have to be displayed or clicked to make up the 70% of a $0.99 app, and how likely are you to get such clickthrough or views. This isnt a rhetorical question. I dont actually know.
What I do know is that i have spent $0.99 ( or more) on apps which I rarely use, and the same on apps I use everyday - like twitter, weather apps, transport [London tube and buses] apps, and so on. Not so much angry birds. which I got bored with, or cut the rope which i got stuck on ( Games for that reason are not the best model for advertising, unless they dumb down).
Continuous revenue is nice too - rather than a blip on release of your game and a drop thereafter, advertising revenue will increase as the game continues to sell and be used.
So there will be a market for ads related apps on the iPhone or Android, for apps that have daily use. However most the money is in paid apps. For games it makes less sense.
I had an iPhone for 2 years, which I paid full price for ($200 with contract I think). I now have an Android that I picked up on promotion for $0 with a 2 year contract. There's no difference between my likelihood of purchasing apps on Android than there was on the iPhone.
That , my friend is an anecdote, not a statistic. For a lot of people a $0 phone is a phone, not a device to use apps. The fact that you came from the iPhone market means you were used to the app world. A consumer who walks into CarPhone Warehouse and gets a free phone - which happens to be Android - may not, and probably will not - buy apps. She, or he, just got a phone. I even know of iPhone users with little use for apps, other than those installed.
Quote:
Android may, in fact, be a more difficult platform to develop for, but the user base will be larger, if it's not already, and the development tools and resources will improve, and both of these facts will make Android an increasingly attractive platform for developers
You can dream up all sorts of reasons why developers will shun Android, but that doesn't mean they will.
I dont agree that Android will overtake iOS - and no it hasnt already ( the iOS platform includes the iPad and the iPod touch) - but we are not "dreaming" anything here. A developer of the MOST SUCCESSFUL app in the history of mobile apps has said that iOS will be dominant for years.
Let's see. Angry birds on iOS has about 15 million downloads....I don't know how many paid versions vs lite versions are installed on iOS devices. 99 cents a pop. Android has over 30 million downloads.....all ad supported. I am curious which platform has made more money.
I am not a developer, but I wouldn't ever code for Android since there is no good way to monetize a product that I spent time on.
I disagree that iOS will be number 1 for a long time. Android will take over marketshare, but Apple will never be a small player. Those two are going to be top two for a very long time.
-Carriers are back in control of the handset's software.
-What you buy is generally what you get. Providing free OS update to old phones doesn't benefit the carriers nor the OEMs. Carriers want you to keep extending your contracts, and OEMs want to keep selling new handsets.
:
Considering the average contract is 2 years, and customers can't upgrade until 20 months or so into it, it's in a carrier's best interest to keep them happy for at least those 20 months with their current device.
Carriers make next to NO money on full retail phones, especially if someone is going from a Droid to a Droid 2. So no, it doesn't benefit the carriers, AT ALL to make a phone obsolete after only 12 months (or less). Not only will this create unrest with the customer base, but it will also make them start calling in constantly trying to get their upgrade date pushed forward.
When you upgrade a US contract, they don't tack 2 years onto your existing contract, they RESET it so it ends 2 years from that day. This means if you get an upgrade after only 6 months, that company is giving you 2 year pricing for only 6 months more of additional service. That makes no business sense whatsoever.
If you look internationally, you'd see that even in areas where phones are generally unsubsidized and untouched, phones still typically get software updates only to fix bugs and not update OS versions. Hardware makers make a KILLING if people buy new phones. This is one of the reasons apple forced ATT to give the early upgrade pricing on iOS devices. Sure, att takes a hit, but apple gets the full cut. Smart of them.
The real issue here isn't carriers (per se) it's our fixation as a culture on getting cheap products on contract. You can bet if contracts didn't exist like they do now (no equipment subsidies) other hardware makers would care more about updating their software.
As it stands now, they can do whatever they want when it comes to software upgrades because the carrier's will take all the blame. If people actually bought their devices from Samsung, Motorola, Apple, etc. And those companies tried obsoleting hardware early, they'd hear about it.
Comments
If the 80/20 rule applies to this scenario, and I'm not saying that it does, of the 300,000 apps, 20%, or 60,000 are generating 80%, or $800 million in revenue. Of course it won't be a flat lined division of the $800 million between 60,000 apps, but this isn't really even the issue we're trying to get to. Developers are not locked into producing just one app - they can have two, twenty, two hundred, two thousand, etc. There are going to be some developers who have multiple successful (and maybe even wildly successful) apps generating big numbers, but others doing very little - again following the typical 80/20 rule (if it plays out this way).
I'm not sure it really matters which platform/os they're writing for - good apps that get more eyeballs on them have a better shot of making money, but following the 80/20 scenario - they'll have just a few apps generating most of the revenue and the remainder doing little or costing them money - again regardless of the platform/os.
I've always thought of Apple vs Android as being similar to the Target vs Walmart comparison. They both sell many of the same basic items (in some cases even the same brands), but the user experience at Target has generally been accepted as the better experience. Part of that is design centric, but Target is also targeting a different audience than Walmart is - not better or worse, but different. I've sold product to both places and there are benefits to both. I believe the same is true for the Apple/Android os businesses.
John
I highlighted why that sort of thing happens a little while ago and why it doesn't really show the App Store as the right way of doing things:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=115462
Apple said they have paid out $1b to developers but we don't know the revenue distribution. The majority of that seems to go to people who were featured on the front page.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-...ose-money/5187
"the revenue distribution isn?t flat, so the big winners will make a lot of money and most apps will probably make next to nothing, suggesting that most apps as a business venture would actually lose money"
Angry Birds made $8m in revenue alone. If the top 200 apps receive similar amounts, there's your $1b and not much for the other 300,000+ apps.
Apple has certainly done a lot of things right and no one else has any better implementation but to make it fair for all developers to be judged by their work and not by how people have found the app, Apple should improve discoverability.
If you want to make money, sell to the cream of the crop: iOS users.
You don't make money with free apps.
Right on.
There's an uncomfortable truth about demographic differences as well, between Apple and non-Apple users.....
If somebody is buying a $250 phone (w/o contract) or under a BOGO offer they are not gonna pay more than $1 for a game, especially if they are not sure if the app/game runs on their budget devices well. Just my two cents.
Where I'm from, iPhone doesn't cost any more than any other smart phone.
The argument of being in "control" has been beaten like a rented mule.
The reason users enjoy the iPhone is that they don't mind (or don't care) about relinquishing low-level control to Apple. iPhone users have better things to do than to have absolute control and micromanage everything about their smartphone. They don't want to have to worry about whether an app is malicious. I for one am relieved that a company like Apple is undertaking a herculean effort to remove as much of the mundane tasks from their users. They recognize the joe-consumer does not want to be a sys-admin in order to work their handsets.
The reason Android users enjoy their phone is because they do have absolute control of their handset, presuming they are proficient enough to root it, and continue installing whatever Android OS updates come along. Android is geek nirvana, hence the Terminator-like commercials.
The problem is that the manufacturers of Android handsets and the wireless providers have ZERO incentive to continue providing 6-month-old handsets with updated OS upgrades. Manufacturers only make money on new handsets. Wireless folks want to sell a new phone to lock the users into another contract. Only the technically-proficient have the time to waste figuring a way around it. For everyone else, they simply buy a new handset, or attempt to do an over-the-air update for those few handsets that allow it and the result is they ruin their phone due to lousy firmware. The tech-tards lambast regular users as being too stupid for their inability to figure out their phones on a technical level, when the reality is they simply do not want to deal with it.
Keep up the good work Apple. Thank goodness that there are more "regular" users than the technical ones that think they know better what everyone else wants.
If you're going to discuss "regular" phone users, you should at least get the description right. Most regular users don't care or expect their phone to have OS updates. They're not sitting around wondering whether the apps in their phone's respective app store is malicious or not. Really, they expect their phone to stay the same until their two years are up and they get a new phone.
There are 5 Android users in my family: Two nieces (around 14 and 17 in age), my nephew (age 19), and my brother (44) and his wife (44). The closest to a tech geek in that group is my nephew and I'm not even sure if he would understand what "rooting" the phone is for or how to do it. He's the only one I could imagine waiting anxiously for an OS update. I don't think any of those people have the same phone, yet all of them have no issues using them or acquiring apps. And I know it will come as a shock but they all seem to enjoy their phones.
There are tech geeks on both the Android and iPhone side of the fence. But those aren't the "regular" users of the phones.
Good point, but a couple of other things should be considered. If 300,000 apps is a fact, how many devs are there? I doubt it's 300,000. I also doubt that you could say the top 200 apps generated revenue the way that Angry Birds did.
That's right, there aren't 300k developers but there are still over 43,000 developers:
http://blog.appstorehq.com/post/7603...including-some
Even if 1,000 of them make a good amount from their apps, that's still leaving 42,000 developers out in the cold and some of them have great apps.
There was a set of data for a particular app online based on chart ranking and I made a graph of it here:
It's quite a steep fall-off as you get to position 70. Although the two factors go hand-in-hand which is why it's hard to draw conclusions form it and explains why it's an exponential curve.
good apps that get more eyeballs on them have a better shot of making money
The problem with that statement is 'good apps'. Apps don't have to be good to get more eyeballs. It's the same with movie theatres. Would anyone ever say that Avatar or Titanic were the best movies of all time? Probably not but they are the two highest grossing films of all time from the same director.
Apps get up the rank through publicity. For the publisher in the link in my last post, it was hitting an Italian market, which boosted the sales up a bit and then as soon as it got onto the front page, it sky-rocketed. This is how most ranking systems work including Google. If you appear anywhere after page 3 for certain keywords, your website will get next to no new visitors from that source.
I don't have the time to browse page by page through 50 lists of icons to see apps on the App Store and I can't tell the App Store the kinds of apps I want so I'm never going to find good apps. Plus I can't browse by rating so I can't filter out the junk. My App Store browsing is now once every couple of months and I just search for EA Games or Gameloft and that's it.
Occasionally you get big publishers making games like Chinatown Wars and Tomb Raider and the Guardian of Light, which are big franchises but how do they knock down apps that have been in the chart so long when they are taking all the publicity every single day? It's obvious to me why Angry Birds has stayed at number 1 for so long and it's because it's been at number 1 for so long. Then it gets blogged about everywhere and people read the blogs and buy it and it stays at number 1.
Like I said in the other thread, I think they need to put a time dampener on the charts so that the longer an app is in the charts, it acts as a detriment to its position. If people keep buying in such high volume that it counters this dampening then it deserves its place, otherwise a good deal of its popularity is because of its place in the chart.
Right on.
Not strictly true. The free version of Angry Birds for Android is ad-supported and on track to make $1m of revenue vs $8m on iOS, which I think has both and has had the app longer. I'd agree that you are likely to make less money on a popular app ad-supported but you could easily make more money from the ad-supported route.
Even if 1,000 of them make a good amount from their apps, that's still leaving 42,000 developers out in the cold and some of them have great apps.
Define "a good amount of money".
Earlier this year, I wrote a quick little app (took me about 4 hours and that included learning ObjC and developing apps in XCode). After Apple's cut, it brings in a steady $70 per month.
Take out the annual Developer Fee and that's about $750 in take-home revenue for 4 hours work.
That's the beauty of the App Store. You don't have to be a professional developer to make money. I investigated releasing to Android and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort.
Angry Birds is on Android.
Indeed, over 200,000 Apps have been written for Android. ISTM that many, many developers think that the viewpoint expressed above is naive. Instead, they realize that Android is THE place to be for developers.
Do you know something that hundreds of thousands of developers, including multibillion dollar powerhouses, don't realize?
Actually, I am an Android developer according to the fact I signed up and downloaded the dev kit, do I plan to ever develop an app for it, nope. How many active developers are there, that is the question. Even better Question is how many developers actually published an app that is more than a skinned web page.
Define "a good amount of money".
Earlier this year, I wrote a quick little app (took me about 4 hours and that included learning ObjC and developing apps in XCode). After Apple's cut, it brings in a steady $70 per month.
Take out the annual Developer Fee and that's about $750 in take-home revenue for 4 hours work.
That's the beauty of the App Store. You don't have to be a professional developer to make money. I investigated releasing to Android and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort.
Well I think everyone or nearly everyone would agree that 750 per year isn't a "good amount of money".
It my be acceptable for you considering the time and effort it took, but no one is making a living off that amount of income.
I heard very recently about iPhones selling for $50 at a nationwide retailer. So much for the "iPhone owners are elite" theory.
Granted it was a Black Friday sale. The whole elitist thing is overdone tho
According to this, one who has never developed is nevertheless a developer.
OK.
Meaning if they are counting people who have downloaded the kit as developers, then their numbers are highly inflated
I worked with a friend of mine who wanted to put one of my apps on Android. The amount of effort needed to just get a half- useful looking UI astonished me.
Yes, this really sucks even if you're a java dev used to the normal suck of java ui development. Worse, the UI enhancements from vendors can muck around with you.
Android will be a success because Windows Mobile (prior to 7) sucks, they don't like RIM lock-in, and they don't like Apple lock-in. But that doesn't make it "good". It just makes it "passable".
What I think it *does* mean, however, is that the development community will coalesce around iOS, because the work is easier, and there is an actual chance you can get paid.
I'm hoping that the WP7 will turn out well.
Well I think everyone or nearly everyone would agree that 750 per year isn't a "good amount of money".
For 4 hours work? It's okay money...$200 an hour and it'll theoretically continue to pull in some money next year.
If somebody is buying a $250 phone (w/o contract) or under a BOGO offer they are not gonna pay more than $1 for a game, especially if they are not sure if the app/game runs on their budget devices well. Just my two cents.
There's no inherent correlation between the price of the phone and what a user would be willing to spend on apps. The simple fact is that Android handset manufacturers *can* sell devices at a much lower profit margin than Apple (or at least than Apple is willing to). If Apple sold iPhones two for the price of one, or gave them away for free through promotions, would you turn it down? Certainly not.
I had an iPhone for 2 years, which I paid full price for ($200 with contract I think). I now have an Android that I picked up on promotion for $0 with a 2 year contract. There's no difference between my likelihood of purchasing apps on Android than there was on the iPhone.
Android may, in fact, be a more difficult platform to develop for, but the user base will be larger, if it's not already, and the development tools and resources will improve, and both of these facts will make Android an increasingly attractive platform for developers.
You can dream up all sorts of reasons why developers will shun Android, but that doesn't mean they will.
Well I think everyone or nearly everyone would agree that 750 per year isn't a "good amount of money".
It my be acceptable for you considering the time and effort it took, but no one is making a living off that amount of income.
True, but "good amount of money" being equivalent to "making a living" is your definition, not mine. To me, $750 means a little extra to spend on the family and a bump up in our savings.
The point I was going for is that the Apple Ecosystem (both development and devices) enables non-professionals a low entry point to create and release applications.
For every "Angry Birds", there are a number of non-professional developers who put together useful applications with little effort. They will never break the top 10 (or top 10000) lists, but by making it easy to earn money (even small amounts), it encourages a larger community of active "developers" and hence, a more robust App Store. Case in point, the App Store has my app, while the Android Marketplace does not.
Vesterbacka said "paid content just doesn?t work on Android." And that is no surprise at all. Google wants it that way.
Android, the software, is free. The software isn't Google's product. Its users' eyeballs on ads and clickthroughs to their advertisers' products are what Google is selling. That's Google's business model, plain and simple.
That's right. Over 90% of Google revenue comes from a highly proprietary, completely closed system known as Google AdWords.
Basically, Google is the world's largest ad agency.
They want people to look at ads because that's what they sell.
Meaning if they are counting people who have downloaded the kit as developers, then their numbers are highly inflated
And the same is equally possible on iOS - I'm sure Apple counts developers by how many have signed up as a developer, not by how many have actually released apps.
Come on guys, let's not be so blindly biased here.
What I do know is that i have spent $0.99 ( or more) on apps which I rarely use, and the same on apps I use everyday - like twitter, weather apps, transport [London tube and buses] apps, and so on. Not so much angry birds. which I got bored with, or cut the rope which i got stuck on ( Games for that reason are not the best model for advertising, unless they dumb down).
Continuous revenue is nice too - rather than a blip on release of your game and a drop thereafter, advertising revenue will increase as the game continues to sell and be used.
So there will be a market for ads related apps on the iPhone or Android, for apps that have daily use. However most the money is in paid apps. For games it makes less sense.
I had an iPhone for 2 years, which I paid full price for ($200 with contract I think). I now have an Android that I picked up on promotion for $0 with a 2 year contract. There's no difference between my likelihood of purchasing apps on Android than there was on the iPhone.
That , my friend is an anecdote, not a statistic. For a lot of people a $0 phone is a phone, not a device to use apps. The fact that you came from the iPhone market means you were used to the app world. A consumer who walks into CarPhone Warehouse and gets a free phone - which happens to be Android - may not, and probably will not - buy apps. She, or he, just got a phone. I even know of iPhone users with little use for apps, other than those installed.
Android may, in fact, be a more difficult platform to develop for, but the user base will be larger, if it's not already, and the development tools and resources will improve, and both of these facts will make Android an increasingly attractive platform for developers
You can dream up all sorts of reasons why developers will shun Android, but that doesn't mean they will.
I dont agree that Android will overtake iOS - and no it hasnt already ( the iOS platform includes the iPad and the iPod touch) - but we are not "dreaming" anything here. A developer of the MOST SUCCESSFUL app in the history of mobile apps has said that iOS will be dominant for years.
Not little old us.
I am not a developer, but I wouldn't ever code for Android since there is no good way to monetize a product that I spent time on.
I disagree that iOS will be number 1 for a long time. Android will take over marketshare, but Apple will never be a small player. Those two are going to be top two for a very long time.
With Android:
-Carriers are back in control of the handset's software.
-What you buy is generally what you get. Providing free OS update to old phones doesn't benefit the carriers nor the OEMs. Carriers want you to keep extending your contracts, and OEMs want to keep selling new handsets.
:
Considering the average contract is 2 years, and customers can't upgrade until 20 months or so into it, it's in a carrier's best interest to keep them happy for at least those 20 months with their current device.
Carriers make next to NO money on full retail phones, especially if someone is going from a Droid to a Droid 2. So no, it doesn't benefit the carriers, AT ALL to make a phone obsolete after only 12 months (or less). Not only will this create unrest with the customer base, but it will also make them start calling in constantly trying to get their upgrade date pushed forward.
When you upgrade a US contract, they don't tack 2 years onto your existing contract, they RESET it so it ends 2 years from that day. This means if you get an upgrade after only 6 months, that company is giving you 2 year pricing for only 6 months more of additional service. That makes no business sense whatsoever.
If you look internationally, you'd see that even in areas where phones are generally unsubsidized and untouched, phones still typically get software updates only to fix bugs and not update OS versions. Hardware makers make a KILLING if people buy new phones. This is one of the reasons apple forced ATT to give the early upgrade pricing on iOS devices. Sure, att takes a hit, but apple gets the full cut. Smart of them.
The real issue here isn't carriers (per se) it's our fixation as a culture on getting cheap products on contract. You can bet if contracts didn't exist like they do now (no equipment subsidies) other hardware makers would care more about updating their software.
As it stands now, they can do whatever they want when it comes to software upgrades because the carrier's will take all the blame. If people actually bought their devices from Samsung, Motorola, Apple, etc. And those companies tried obsoleting hardware early, they'd hear about it.