With pretty much all mobile browsers being non-IE-based, the increased Mac sales,and the growing number of users for Gecko engine (Firefox) and Webkit engines (Safari, Chrome) the likelihood of these sites making their web apps more compatible will grow.
There are still plenty of government websites that don't allow you to enter if you are using IE. However, you can sometimes trick it by changing your User Agent. If that doesn't work, you can almost always bypass their weak browser check by finding the cached site in Google. Once you enter there you are usually fine.
I'm not a Realtor®, but my parents are. I prefer VMWare, but for them I have installed Parallels. It works fine but the OS within an OS concept is not the easiest concept for most people. I have streamlined it as much as possible, but I wish it was better. CrossOver worked well for displaying on the screen but printing from IE in CrossOver was all messed up. I figure in a few years this won't be an issue.
Although many imagine the App Store a cash cow for Apple, a detailed examination has revealed that the iPhone maker may only have earned between $20 million and $45 million from the store for its first billion downloads -- a figure the company is likely more than happy to accept.
A figure I also would have been extremely happy with for my less than a year old internet start-up.
In Florida, the MLS won't even work with OS X. It requires IE 7 or higher. You can either run Windows or CrossOver on your Mac, but neither one is ideal.
AAgghh don't remind me ... groan ... (but wait for the bright spark that always chimes in that it works for him in Canada and have we tried using Safari with the debugger running?)
Only upside for me is I have earned a few coffees fixing Windblows in Parallels for friends who are Realtors running Parallels or VMWare in my spare moments.
(Yes it's freaking early .. got to drive to Miami at 3.a.m.!)
It is a small % of turn over and although great for Apple makes the chances of copy cats making money on far smaller sales slim. For example the ZunePhone App store will no doubt sell lots of 'Adventures of Monkey Dancer' internally but I don't see it hitting a billion sales in the first decade on other products based on history.
Um, do we really have any support that the percentage of paid apps is really only 2.5%-7%? This whole analysis hinges on that claim, and it seems a bit outlandish to me. Maybe I'm the only one who considers an app that costs $1.99 to be essentially the same as free?
Yeah, the whole claim seems to be made by some guy who can scribble basic maths on a scrap of paper - a shame when you think he's supposed to have a degree in Pure Mathematics:
"Jeremy Liew made the calculation after learning that there's typically a ratio of 15 to 40 free apps for every one paid example and after discovering an O'Reilly estimate which determines that the mean price for an app is about $2.65."
The ratio of paid apps to free ones doesn't mean anything in the calculation unless they are talking about downloads but the guy even admits it's a huge assumption that has no firm support. The mean price of an app doesn't really make a difference either as it's only based on data for the top 100 apps.
Until Apple actually release their earnings for the App Store, this is all just random and quite baseless speculation. Here's my take:
"Estimates from wildly unconnected sources suggest that the number of paids apps downloaded may in fact be 30%, which means that the number of paid downloads exceeds 300,000,000. The most popular apps were among the most expensive such as Super Monkey Ball, which still sells for about $5. This puts the mean price at around $3 so the income drawn is about $900,000,000 of which Apple make $300,000,000."
^ How is the data given here any less accurate? It was pulled out my ass just the same. These 'analyses' and subsequent rumors get pretty tiresome when they aren't based on facts.
As an aside to download services, Sony now charges publishers $0.16/GB for free content on the Playstation Network for the first 60 days. The recent Resident Evil 5 demo is estimated to have cost Capcom $225,000 to deliver to fans on the PS3.
Obviously Apple is never going to bill app developers for bandwidth but it highlights the cost of bandwidth to the likes of Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Valve. I wouldn't be surprised is Apple is making something south of $20mil once you factor in all costs.
But that's not a problem for Apple. It's always been about selling hardware and the app store certainly does that.
As an aside to download services, Sony now charges publishers $0.16/GB for free content on the Playstation Network for the first 60 days. The recent Resident Evil 5 demo is estimated to have cost Capcom $225,000 to deliver to fans on the PS3.
What size is the demo? At 1.5GB there would have been about 1 million downloads of the demo, which is quite good.
So between 950 million and 975 million apps were free?
Yeah lol. But that's ok, because the fact that they made any money from the app store at all was a good thing, it means it's working for everyone else. I see the money made by apple from the app store as advertising fees to an extent, know what I mean? In exchange for a larger audience, the developer agrees to give up some of the profits. I don't think Apple ever thought the app store would be an extreme source of revenue. The main point of the app store was to have a feature that phones like nokia, blackberries, and wm phones all lacked.
$45 million, lots of happy developers, a new ecosystem that everyone and his brother is desperately trying to emulate, and spillover effects in creating/sustaining hardware demand/sales.
As an aside to download services, Sony now charges publishers $0.16/GB for free content on the Playstation Network for the first 60 days. The recent Resident Evil 5 demo is estimated to have cost Capcom $225,000 to deliver to fans on the PS3.
Just to be clear, the systems are different. Having a game demo in the GB and a free iPhone app that is just a few MBs are completely different dynamics.
Besides the size, one is a promo for an upcoming game that will be sold and the other is part of the draw to the iPhone/Touch consumer ecosystem, and even the draw for new developers to Cocoa and Objective-C.
While free to the demo users, that small charge that looks to be a break even price for Sony will just get folded into the game's price for the paying customers.
$45 million, lots of happy developers, a new ecosystem that everyone and his brother is desperately trying to emulate, and spillover effects in creating/sustaining hardware demand/sales.
What's not to like?
exactly. Even people who don't have iphones, or for some reason despise iphones, should be happy with the effect it's had on other companies trying to compete. Something like this just fuels innovation elsewhere.
exactly. Even people who don't have iphones, or for some reason despise iphones, should be happy with the effect it's had on other companies trying to compete. Something like this just fuels innovation elsewhere.
Exactly. Love it or hate, your preferred smartphone will be better because of the iPhone's existence.
If the AppStore makes a profit it means that the cost of providing the store have been covered.
If read the article, it clearly says that these 45 m are before cost. Nobody knows whether these 45 m (which are only a guess) cover there costs or not even though it is implicitly assumed that they do.
If read the article, it clearly says that these 45 m are before cost. Nobody knows whether these 45 m (which are only a guess) cover there costs or not even though it is implicitly assumed that they do.
Well, now we know why the app store approval process is so troubled. As I suspected, it's most likely two guys who review every single app one by one manually. They probably can't afford more than that without running the store at a loss.
Comments
With pretty much all mobile browsers being non-IE-based, the increased Mac sales,and the growing number of users for Gecko engine (Firefox) and Webkit engines (Safari, Chrome) the likelihood of these sites making their web apps more compatible will grow.
There are still plenty of government websites that don't allow you to enter if you are using IE. However, you can sometimes trick it by changing your User Agent. If that doesn't work, you can almost always bypass their weak browser check by finding the cached site in Google. Once you enter there you are usually fine.
I'm not a Realtor®, but my parents are. I prefer VMWare, but for them I have installed Parallels. It works fine but the OS within an OS concept is not the easiest concept for most people. I have streamlined it as much as possible, but I wish it was better. CrossOver worked well for displaying on the screen but printing from IE in CrossOver was all messed up. I figure in a few years this won't be an issue.
What was this thread about?
Although many imagine the App Store a cash cow for Apple, a detailed examination has revealed that the iPhone maker may only have earned between $20 million and $45 million from the store for its first billion downloads -- a figure the company is likely more than happy to accept.
A figure I also would have been extremely happy with for my less than a year old internet start-up.
In Florida, the MLS won't even work with OS X. It requires IE 7 or higher. You can either run Windows or CrossOver on your Mac, but neither one is ideal.
AAgghh don't remind me ... groan ... (but wait for the bright spark that always chimes in that it works for him in Canada and have we tried using Safari with the debugger running?)
Only upside for me is I have earned a few coffees fixing Windblows in Parallels for friends who are Realtors running Parallels or VMWare in my spare moments.
(Yes it's freaking early .. got to drive to Miami at 3.a.m.!)
Um, do we really have any support that the percentage of paid apps is really only 2.5%-7%? This whole analysis hinges on that claim, and it seems a bit outlandish to me. Maybe I'm the only one who considers an app that costs $1.99 to be essentially the same as free?
Yeah, the whole claim seems to be made by some guy who can scribble basic maths on a scrap of paper - a shame when you think he's supposed to have a degree in Pure Mathematics:
http://www.lightspeedvp.com/TeamMember.aspx?m=27
but then he did work for AOL.
"Jeremy Liew made the calculation after learning that there's typically a ratio of 15 to 40 free apps for every one paid example and after discovering an O'Reilly estimate which determines that the mean price for an app is about $2.65."
The ratio of paid apps to free ones doesn't mean anything in the calculation unless they are talking about downloads but the guy even admits it's a huge assumption that has no firm support. The mean price of an app doesn't really make a difference either as it's only based on data for the top 100 apps.
Until Apple actually release their earnings for the App Store, this is all just random and quite baseless speculation. Here's my take:
"Estimates from wildly unconnected sources suggest that the number of paids apps downloaded may in fact be 30%, which means that the number of paid downloads exceeds 300,000,000. The most popular apps were among the most expensive such as Super Monkey Ball, which still sells for about $5. This puts the mean price at around $3 so the income drawn is about $900,000,000 of which Apple make $300,000,000."
^ How is the data given here any less accurate? It was pulled out my ass just the same. These 'analyses' and subsequent rumors get pretty tiresome when they aren't based on facts.
There are around 40.000 apps in the store now which produced 1 bn downloads.
Only 25% of those apps are free. Rest are paid apps.
If you take those absolut numbers into your calculations, the total number of downloads for paid apps should be around 200 m. This looks better to me.
Assumption is that a free add is downloaded 15x more than a paid app.
Obviously Apple is never going to bill app developers for bandwidth but it highlights the cost of bandwidth to the likes of Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Valve. I wouldn't be surprised is Apple is making something south of $20mil once you factor in all costs.
But that's not a problem for Apple. It's always been about selling hardware and the app store certainly does that.
As an aside to download services, Sony now charges publishers $0.16/GB for free content on the Playstation Network for the first 60 days. The recent Resident Evil 5 demo is estimated to have cost Capcom $225,000 to deliver to fans on the PS3.
What size is the demo? At 1.5GB there would have been about 1 million downloads of the demo, which is quite good.
So between 950 million and 975 million apps were free?
Yeah lol. But that's ok, because the fact that they made any money from the app store at all was a good thing, it means it's working for everyone else. I see the money made by apple from the app store as advertising fees to an extent, know what I mean? In exchange for a larger audience, the developer agrees to give up some of the profits. I don't think Apple ever thought the app store would be an extreme source of revenue. The main point of the app store was to have a feature that phones like nokia, blackberries, and wm phones all lacked.
What size is the demo? At 1.5GB there would have been about 1 million downloads of the demo, which is quite good.
1.5 million downloaded it so I assume the demo was ~1GB. Sales have been good so it looks like the investment paid off for Capcom.
What's not to like?
As an aside to download services, Sony now charges publishers $0.16/GB for free content on the Playstation Network for the first 60 days. The recent Resident Evil 5 demo is estimated to have cost Capcom $225,000 to deliver to fans on the PS3.
Just to be clear, the systems are different. Having a game demo in the GB and a free iPhone app that is just a few MBs are completely different dynamics.
Besides the size, one is a promo for an upcoming game that will be sold and the other is part of the draw to the iPhone/Touch consumer ecosystem, and even the draw for new developers to Cocoa and Objective-C.
While free to the demo users, that small charge that looks to be a break even price for Sony will just get folded into the game's price for the paying customers.
$45 million, lots of happy developers, a new ecosystem that everyone and his brother is desperately trying to emulate, and spillover effects in creating/sustaining hardware demand/sales.
What's not to like?
exactly. Even people who don't have iphones, or for some reason despise iphones, should be happy with the effect it's had on other companies trying to compete. Something like this just fuels innovation elsewhere.
exactly. Even people who don't have iphones, or for some reason despise iphones, should be happy with the effect it's had on other companies trying to compete. Something like this just fuels innovation elsewhere.
Exactly. Love it or hate, your preferred smartphone will be better because of the iPhone's existence.
Many companies would be happy to make $45 million on something.
I was about to say.
Compare and contrast to, say, Microsoft. Their new projects are called a success when they succeed in losing billions for years.
If the AppStore makes a profit it means that the cost of providing the store have been covered.
If read the article, it clearly says that these 45 m are before cost. Nobody knows whether these 45 m (which are only a guess) cover there costs or not even though it is implicitly assumed that they do.
If read the article, it clearly says that these 45 m are before cost. Nobody knows whether these 45 m (which are only a guess) cover there costs or not even though it is implicitly assumed that they do.
Well, now we know why the app store approval process is so troubled. As I suspected, it's most likely two guys who review every single app one by one manually. They probably can't afford more than that without running the store at a loss.