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Honestly I have a hard time taking anything this gentleman says seriously when he starts his article saying he doesn't know anyone who buys iPhone apps. How can
by jsz0 17y ago
Honestly I have a hard time taking anything this gentleman says seriously when he starts his article saying he doesn't know anyone who buys iPhone apps. How can you have an accurate view of the iPhone app market if you don't even know any consumers who use it? I know plenty of people who buy LOTS of apps. I've personally probably spent over $100 on apps of different kinds.
"Instead, EA had to sell it to me for $5.99. What a shame."
Yea it's a shame consumers are benefitting from competition and getting higher quality software in the process. I would think by now software developers would understand if you don't offer me a good product at a good price I will just steal it and you will get $0. Be happy with my $5.99 because you could have much less with this attitude.
- frossie 17y agoHonestly I have a hard time taking anything this gentleman says seriously when he starts his article saying he doesn't know anyone who buys iPhone apps. I was confused by that statement to. I personally don't know any iPhone users who haven't bought at least one app. Okay maybe some were bought with iTunes gift vouchers around Christmas, but still, the app was bought by somebody.
- ankhmoop 17y agoBe happy with my $5.99 because you could have much less with this attitude. Your $5.99 isn't enough to support developing anything but a cheap, top-50 hit of an application. Thanks to remarkably steep price competition and remarkably poor discoverability, the app store very much lacks anything resembling a long tail. We sold a small app for $1.99, just to compete with similar apps in the space. If we'd sold our app for $5.99, we would have made a tidy profit on solid initial sales and moved on to make another application. However, at the $5.99 range we're competing with much more polished and comprehensive applications. This left us barely covering our development costs at the $1.99 price, with our sales rapidly declining after the first month.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoYour $5.99 isn't enough to support developing anything but a cheap, top-50 hit of an application I can hear traditional airlines grumble: "For 50 USD/EUR we can't even serve proper meals, assign seat numbers or use central hub airports"
- ankhmoop 17y agoExcept that for $1.99, we can't even afford to invest in writing a small, useful application -- and we're a very small, very low-overhead company.