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> Maybe you don't care about people in Senegal or Bangladesh or the Phillipines. This brings to mind a more interesting question: nevermind you, but can Senega

> Maybe you don't care about people in Senegal or Bangladesh or the Phillipines. This brings to mind a more interesting question: nevermind you, but can Senegalese, Bangladeshi and Phillipino developers make money at $1/mo? If the answer is yes, where are all the local apps taking over the world with their low prices? If the answer is no, are you depriving those locales of local producers?

d3nj4l 6y ago
Disclaimer: I'm Indian, I'm writing from my experience here. I can't speak for any of the three countries you mentioned, but I think you can extrapolate. In the Indian market most of these apps are just free and ad supported, by which I mean they are filled to the brim with banner ads and every action requires going through an interstitial ad. As for this, though: > where are all the local apps taking over the world with their low prices? There's a ton of shovelware made in developing countries on the Play store, it's just not good. Most of them have bad UI, bad UX and/or the ad problem I mentioned earlier, making them unappealing to anybody who can afford an alternative. There's also the fact that apps made locally target local customers for region-specific use cases, so you're not likely to find them useful if you're not from the region (and that is, if you can find them at all in the Play store without any marketing targeted at you!) I know of a few decent to good apps that have to do with Indian accounting etc, and they're making good money at low prices but nobody in the US is going to use them because they're made with the Indian GST and accounting principles in mind. An implication is that these apps don't follow US/EU regulations. There was an Indian-made fertility app that was collecting data that was flagrantly in violation of GDPR (https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys-business-mine-how-menstruations-apps-are-sharing-your-data https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys-bus..., search for "Maya by Plackal Tech".) To them, the additional work required to be GDPR compliant is not worth it, given that the domestic market is big enough for them at the early stage.
ivanhoe 6y ago
> If the answer is yes, where are all the local apps taking over the world with their low prices? They're out there, but you've never heard of them because to market them to Western public you have to pay Western prices for ads, and it's out of reach for the most of 3rd world indy devs. And at the local markets it's hard to sell even at very low prices, as customers tend to be more careful with their expenses even at $1/mo prices. In poor(er) countries it's not just that people earn less proportionally while still keeping the same relative buying power. A lot of stuff that you need is not proportionally cheaper, and often it's even more expensive if it's from import or market is small, so people have less money to spend both in the total and relative terms... and because of that free/bootleg versions are the number one choice for any software. And all of that results in lowering the bar, poor overall quality of software products, as it just doesn't make much sense to invest time in polishing products too much, it will not pay out.

d3nj4l 6y ago

Disclaimer: I'm Indian, I'm writing from my experience here. I can't speak for any of the three countries you mentioned, but I think you can extrapolate. In the Indian market most of these apps are just free and ad supported, by which I mean they are filled to the brim with banner ads and every action requires going through an interstitial ad. As for this, though: > where are all the local apps taking over the world with their low prices? There's a ton of shovelware made in developing countries on the Play store, it's just not good. Most of them have bad UI, bad UX and/or the ad problem I mentioned earlier, making them unappealing to anybody who can afford an alternative. There's also the fact that apps made locally target local customers for region-specific use cases, so you're not likely to find them useful if you're not from the region (and that is, if you can find them at all in the Play store without any marketing targeted at you!) I know of a few decent to good apps that have to do with Indian accounting etc, and they're making good money at low prices but nobody in the US is going to use them because they're made with the Indian GST and accounting principles in mind. An implication is that these apps don't follow US/EU regulations. There was an Indian-made fertility app that was collecting data that was flagrantly in violation of GDPR (https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys-business-mine-how-menstruations-apps-are-sharing-your-data https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys-bus..., search for "Maya by Plackal Tech".) To them, the additional work required to be GDPR compliant is not worth it, given that the domestic market is big enough for them at the early stage.

ivanhoe 6y ago

> If the answer is yes, where are all the local apps taking over the world with their low prices? They're out there, but you've never heard of them because to market them to Western public you have to pay Western prices for ads, and it's out of reach for the most of 3rd world indy devs. And at the local markets it's hard to sell even at very low prices, as customers tend to be more careful with their expenses even at $1/mo prices. In poor(er) countries it's not just that people earn less proportionally while still keeping the same relative buying power. A lot of stuff that you need is not proportionally cheaper, and often it's even more expensive if it's from import or market is small, so people have less money to spend both in the total and relative terms... and because of that free/bootleg versions are the number one choice for any software. And all of that results in lowering the bar, poor overall quality of software products, as it just doesn't make much sense to invest time in polishing products too much, it will not pay out.