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This seems to be happening much more with mobile apps than desktop software, and I can't help feeling this is partly a response to not being able to charge a se

This seems to be happening much more with mobile apps than desktop software, and I can't help feeling this is partly a response to not being able to charge a serious price for a serious app as a one-off. In mobile world, apps cost a few dollars at most. That's just how it is, because everything in the early days was quick and cheap and that set the market's expectations. It doesn't matter that you needed to spend a billion dollars in R&D and your app is the secret to eternal life, if it's more than $1.99, it's too expensive and the bad reviews will pour in. So if you really are building something that is expensive but worth it, you need to disguise the price, and thus almost everything serious uses either in-app purchases or a subscription model to avoid the scary number. Compare this to the world of professional software, where it's almost the other way around. Businesses are used to spending lots of money on software, because it makes them more money in return, but they won't do so lightly. To get businesses to pay on a subscription basis, even the biggest names in the industry have had to set their subscription levels at a tiny fraction of the previous cost for a one-off purchase, because businesses will do the sums and won't take the deal if it's going to work out too expensive.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
It seems to be happening in desktop as well, I was looking for some bookkeeping software and it has all shifted to subscriptions in the last couple of years.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  There are definitely moves in that direction on desktop as well, for sure. Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk are some of the big names that traditionally made expensive business software and increasingly rely on subscriptions (and bulk licensing for larger businesses, though in itself that's nothing new). No doubt there are many smaller players trying to follow the same path, though I find it interesting that other smaller players are starting to compete based on not having the downsides of a subscription. It seems the market is big enough for both variations, at least in some areas.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

It seems to be happening in desktop as well, I was looking for some bookkeeping software and it has all shifted to subscriptions in the last couple of years.

Silhouette 9y ago
There are definitely moves in that direction on desktop as well, for sure. Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk are some of the big names that traditionally made expensive business software and increasingly rely on subscriptions (and bulk licensing for larger businesses, though in itself that's nothing new). No doubt there are many smaller players trying to follow the same path, though I find it interesting that other smaller players are starting to compete based on not having the downsides of a subscription. It seems the market is big enough for both variations, at least in some areas.