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How do you define "competitive" if you're not defining it in a way that correlates with "popular"?

by eridius 12y ago

frandroid 12y ago
Competitive is a question of demand versus supply; you can have super competitive small markets. You have 1 yellow marble, 5 blue marbles, and 10 people. 5 people want a yellow marble, and five want a blue marble. Blue and yellow marbles are just as popular, but the competition for yellow marbles is much more intense.
- eridius 12y ago
  Given that we're discussing the supply side of things, I think your example is backwards. But even if you changed it to competition for supplying the desire of yellow marbles, I still don't think it's relevant. It's certainly true that there's an incredible supply of cheap/free games on iOS (typically of very low quality, or chock-full of F2P mechanics or ads). But there's a very low supply of high-quality serious games being sold for more-than-a-cup-of-coffee prices. I think there's certainly a market for those games, the problem is just that you can't rely on the App Store for discovery (but you never really could do that anyway). So it seems the real problem is just that Jeff Vogel doesn't know how to market his stuff, and rather than actually figuring it out, or, heck, hiring someone else to do it for him, he's just giving up on the market entirely. Which is a real shame.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    You're assuming he doesn't know how to market it. It's entirely possibly he's run the numbers, and found that for the required outlay the expected return isn't worth it, keeping in mind that his time and ability is finite, and that there may be other opportunities that are better investments of his time and money. In fact, he basically says exactly that.
    - eridius 12y ago
      As has been pointed out elsewhere in this comments section, he apparently has already admitted that he's bad at marketing his own stuff.
kbenson 12y ago
In the beginning, the App store was popular (people used it), but was not competitive (there weren't a lot of apps, comparatively). Thus, many apps earned quite a bit of money than now because they got a larger percentage of the available consumers. Even if we assume the App store today had the exact same number of consumers, there's many more apps competing for those users. The marketplace is very competitive, and the percentage of available users is less per app (on average). My guess is that the reality is that the App store has many more consumers (or consumer dollars which is what we care about), but the number of apps has increased much more rapidly than consumer spending (e.g. supply increased much faster than demand).
- eridius 12y ago
  The "gold rush" mentality was always a bit of a myth. There were a few apps that really did strike it rich, but the App Store has never really been a place where you could submit an app and watch the money roll in. That's not true now, and that wasn't true when it launched either. It's just a fantasy that a lot of people have.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    Whether there was a gold rush or not is irrelevant for my argument. This isn't about being the random popular app, it's about the marketplace, supply and demand. How many flashlight apps were available 6 years ago? How many are available now? How has the average price changed? Given roughly equivalent ratings, how much research does the user have to do to figure out if one is better for their needs than another? How likely are they to do this? Are the per year proceeds of the average flashlight app higher now or back then? Even if we limit it to apps with a high ratings, how does it look? Are there other app store segments where the outcome is better or worse?
    - eridius 12y ago
      I don't understand your argument. Flashlight apps? There was a brief flurry of flashlight apps, and fart machine apps, and Apple then declared that they would stop accepting trivial clones of existing trivial functionality like flashlights / fart machines. But that's not really relevant, especially as the average price for those apps was generally $0. Those apps existed because they were easy to make, people who made them thought it was fun / funny / a learning exercise / whatever, but it was never a money-making category of apps. Ever.

How do you define "competitive" if you're not defining it in a way that correlates with "popular"?

by eridius 12y ago

How do you define "competitive" if you're not defining it in a way that correlates with "popular"?

Competitive is a question of demand versus supply; you can have super competitive small markets. You have 1 yellow marble, 5 blue marbles, and 10 people. 5 people want a yellow marble, and five want a blue marble. Blue and yellow marbles are just as popular, but the competition for yellow marbles is much more intense.

eridius 12y ago
Given that we're discussing the supply side of things, I think your example is backwards. But even if you changed it to competition for supplying the desire of yellow marbles, I still don't think it's relevant. It's certainly true that there's an incredible supply of cheap/free games on iOS (typically of very low quality, or chock-full of F2P mechanics or ads). But there's a very low supply of high-quality serious games being sold for more-than-a-cup-of-coffee prices. I think there's certainly a market for those games, the problem is just that you can't rely on the App Store for discovery (but you never really could do that anyway). So it seems the real problem is just that Jeff Vogel doesn't know how to market his stuff, and rather than actually figuring it out, or, heck, hiring someone else to do it for him, he's just giving up on the market entirely. Which is a real shame.
- kbenson 12y ago
  You're assuming he doesn't know how to market it. It's entirely possibly he's run the numbers, and found that for the required outlay the expected return isn't worth it, keeping in mind that his time and ability is finite, and that there may be other opportunities that are better investments of his time and money. In fact, he basically says exactly that.
  - eridius 12y ago
    As has been pointed out elsewhere in this comments section, he apparently has already admitted that he's bad at marketing his own stuff.

kbenson 12y ago

In the beginning, the App store was popular (people used it), but was not competitive (there weren't a lot of apps, comparatively). Thus, many apps earned quite a bit of money than now because they got a larger percentage of the available consumers. Even if we assume the App store today had the exact same number of consumers, there's many more apps competing for those users. The marketplace is very competitive, and the percentage of available users is less per app (on average). My guess is that the reality is that the App store has many more consumers (or consumer dollars which is what we care about), but the number of apps has increased much more rapidly than consumer spending (e.g. supply increased much faster than demand).

eridius 12y ago
The "gold rush" mentality was always a bit of a myth. There were a few apps that really did strike it rich, but the App Store has never really been a place where you could submit an app and watch the money roll in. That's not true now, and that wasn't true when it launched either. It's just a fantasy that a lot of people have.
- kbenson 12y ago
  Whether there was a gold rush or not is irrelevant for my argument. This isn't about being the random popular app, it's about the marketplace, supply and demand. How many flashlight apps were available 6 years ago? How many are available now? How has the average price changed? Given roughly equivalent ratings, how much research does the user have to do to figure out if one is better for their needs than another? How likely are they to do this? Are the per year proceeds of the average flashlight app higher now or back then? Even if we limit it to apps with a high ratings, how does it look? Are there other app store segments where the outcome is better or worse?
  - eridius 12y ago
    I don't understand your argument. Flashlight apps? There was a brief flurry of flashlight apps, and fart machine apps, and Apple then declared that they would stop accepting trivial clones of existing trivial functionality like flashlights / fart machines. But that's not really relevant, especially as the average price for those apps was generally $0. Those apps existed because they were easy to make, people who made them thought it was fun / funny / a learning exercise / whatever, but it was never a money-making category of apps. Ever.