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If you boil everything down to the most reductionist form, the majority of software development is an exchange of lines of code for food, clothes and shelter. T

by cwyers 12y ago

If you boil everything down to the most reductionist form, the majority of software development is an exchange of lines of code for food, clothes and shelter. There may be more freedom on other mobile OSes (although I'm not sure which you mean... Firefox OS? Is there another one?), but there isn't more MONEY. Stallman's notions of software freedoms don't put bread on the table. People are more willing to pay for software on the closed mobile ecosystems, for a lot of reasons (ease of use/user experience, hardware availability, etc.).

walterbell 12y ago
What are some examples of financially successful mobile software where the value lies in the mobile software, rather than a cloud-hosted server running a Stallman-esque Unix derivative?
- fleitz 12y ago
  Angry birds.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    They are an outlier, 50% of their revenue is non-software, from brand licensing (theme parks, toys, movies, etc).
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- cwyers 12y ago
  I absolutely love questions that can be answered in about five seconds of research: http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/paid-apps/ http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/paid-apps/ Most of the games I would argue the value lies in the mobile software, and even for cloud-powered games there's none where the client is valueless. There's also a bunch of fitness apps, photo editing -- one of the top five is an alarm clock! Lots of apps are "financially successful" without just being a shim in front of a cloud server.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    That "clock" is collecting sensor telemetry / healthkit data, which has secondary business models beyond software revenue, and definitely relies on centralized compute.
felixgallo 12y ago
Actually, the median and average developer lose money writing for the app stores, even if on the other devices they gave their software away for free. registering as an apple developer costs 99$ a year, and essentially all apps on the App Store never make more than a few dollars.
- SG- 12y ago
  The good ones make money and easily cover the $99/year.
- fleitz 12y ago
  For most devs especially early devs having apps on the store was key to getting gigs. It doesn't matter so much now but a few years ago it was the first question asked by clients.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Let's look at the facts[1]: "As of June, Apple has had 75 billion cumulative App Store downloads, paying out a total of $20 billion to developers, with $5 billion paid in 2014 alone. According to app-tracking site AppShopper, there are 1,211,461 apps available in the App Store, including over 1 million iPhone apps and 610,000 iPad apps." There are literally billons of dollars sloshing through the App Store, not even counting ad revenue. Yes, most of the apps released don't see any of that. But some of them do. It absolutely IS possible to make enough to make a living selling apps on the App Store, or on Google Play for that matter. There's over a million apps on the App Store, and if only one percent of them is producing meaningful revenues, that's still over 10,000 apps, many of them likely supporting multiple developers. And I suspect that, even though the median payment is a pittance, it's more than 1% making revenue. And again, this isn't even counting ads! What libre smartphone OS has that kind of revenue potential available to developers? 1) http://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/05/app-store-july-record/ http://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/05/app-store-july-record/
  - felixgallo 12y ago
    The existence of possibility does not magically grant probability, and revenue potential does not impress banks or mortgage lenders or grocery stores when the bills come due. By the same token, your local 7-11 is not a magical fountain of wealth just because it has lottery tickets. Any time you are told to labor for negative $100 in order to recoup a number very likely less than $100 over time that has 30% taken out of it for no apparent reason at all, you should think twice.

by cwyers 12y ago

walterbell 12y ago

What are some examples of financially successful mobile software where the value lies in the mobile software, rather than a cloud-hosted server running a Stallman-esque Unix derivative?

fleitz 12y ago
Angry birds.
- walterbell 12y ago
  They are an outlier, 50% of their revenue is non-software, from brand licensing (theme parks, toys, movies, etc).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
cwyers 12y ago
I absolutely love questions that can be answered in about five seconds of research: http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/paid-apps/ http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/paid-apps/ Most of the games I would argue the value lies in the mobile software, and even for cloud-powered games there's none where the client is valueless. There's also a bunch of fitness apps, photo editing -- one of the top five is an alarm clock! Lots of apps are "financially successful" without just being a shim in front of a cloud server.
- walterbell 12y ago
  That "clock" is collecting sensor telemetry / healthkit data, which has secondary business models beyond software revenue, and definitely relies on centralized compute.

felixgallo 12y ago

Actually, the median and average developer lose money writing for the app stores, even if on the other devices they gave their software away for free. registering as an apple developer costs 99$ a year, and essentially all apps on the App Store never make more than a few dollars.

SG- 12y ago
The good ones make money and easily cover the $99/year.
fleitz 12y ago
For most devs especially early devs having apps on the store was key to getting gigs. It doesn't matter so much now but a few years ago it was the first question asked by clients.
cwyers 12y ago
Let's look at the facts[1]: "As of June, Apple has had 75 billion cumulative App Store downloads, paying out a total of $20 billion to developers, with $5 billion paid in 2014 alone. According to app-tracking site AppShopper, there are 1,211,461 apps available in the App Store, including over 1 million iPhone apps and 610,000 iPad apps." There are literally billons of dollars sloshing through the App Store, not even counting ad revenue. Yes, most of the apps released don't see any of that. But some of them do. It absolutely IS possible to make enough to make a living selling apps on the App Store, or on Google Play for that matter. There's over a million apps on the App Store, and if only one percent of them is producing meaningful revenues, that's still over 10,000 apps, many of them likely supporting multiple developers. And I suspect that, even though the median payment is a pittance, it's more than 1% making revenue. And again, this isn't even counting ads! What libre smartphone OS has that kind of revenue potential available to developers? 1) http://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/05/app-store-july-record/ http://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/05/app-store-july-record/
- felixgallo 12y ago
  The existence of possibility does not magically grant probability, and revenue potential does not impress banks or mortgage lenders or grocery stores when the bills come due. By the same token, your local 7-11 is not a magical fountain of wealth just because it has lottery tickets. Any time you are told to labor for negative $100 in order to recoup a number very likely less than $100 over time that has 30% taken out of it for no apparent reason at all, you should think twice.