Apple’s annual conference for developers, which kicks off next Monday, is normally when the company previews its newest software for iOS and Mac OS X. But this year’s WWDC isn’t just about new operating systems: starting next week and continuing throughout the fall, Apple will begin rolling out new incentives for developers in its App Store, including a new revenue-share model and the introduction of search ads in its iOS App Store.
In a rare pre-WWDC sit-down interview with The Verge, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said that Apple would soon alter its revenue-sharing model for apps. While the well-known 70/30 split will remain, developers who are able to maintain a subscription with a customer longer than a year will see Apple’s cut drop down to 15 percent. The option to sell subscriptions will also be available to all developers instead of just a few kinds of apps. “Now we’re going to open up to all categories,” Schiller says, “and that includes games, which is a huge category.”
As much as I applaud Apple for trying to do something about the terrible state of their application store, I don’t think any of this will provide the answer. If people are unwilling to spend a euro on an application, the solution clearly is not to ask them to pay a euro a month. No, these changes feel far more like trying to increase the revenue for the big, established players, further drowning out the few interesting indie developers that remain.
Back when the gold rush in mobile development was still in full swing, I was mocked for suggesting the model simply wasn’t tenable, and was wreaking havoc among the indie development scene. I do feel at least a little bit of vindication that finally, finally, Apple seems to agree with me that their application store model is broken.
Great scoop for The Verge and Lauren Goode, by the way.
“As much as I applaud Apple for trying to do something about the terrible state of their application store, I don’t think any of this will provide the answer.”
Then why commend Apple if you don’t think what they are doing will work?
“No, these changes feel far more like trying to increase the revenue for the big, established players, further drowning out the few interesting indie developers that remain.
Back when the gold rush in mobile development was still in full swing, I was mocked for suggesting the model simply wasn’t tenable, and was wreaking havoc among the indie development scene. I do feel at least a little bit of vindication that finally, finally, Apple seems to agree with me that their application store model is broken.”
In the same vein as my comment above, Apple may agree that the model is broken, but by your analysis they don’t agree on the same premise as you do. They feel that fixing the model caters to the established devs instead of the smaller indie shops.
I don’t think you can find solace in anything here based on what you’ve said.
The original App store was a revolution in software. The result has been a massive increase in the volume of software distributed, a very significant fall in the price of software packages, the development of a new model of small job specific apps (instead of big bloated do everything packages), and the infiltration of software into almost everyones daily lives and routines in a way that was unimaginable 10 years ago. In the process developers have made around $50 billion on just the iOS platform alone.
That’s not a broken model that’s called progress.
Does anybody really think that going back to a model of software distributed via CDs and in boxes, often costing hundreds of bucks a pop, with arcane and intrusive piracy preventions systems (does anybody remember dongles?) would be an improvement? Of course not. The App store represented a massive step forward for software.
The issue is how can the system be improved. Clearly the Apple app store was just too successful for its old model, too many apps, too cumbersome, with revenue and approval systems that could not cope with the volume and complexities involved. The other problem was the App store had out grown its management systems inside Apple. Putting Schiller in charge of the App store was a very important signal that Apple wanted to significantly improve, reform and restructure the entire Apple App ecosystem system. Hopefully this year we will see the fruits of the behind the scene work thats been going on for a while.
BTW this was not really a scoop for the Verge because Schiller is reaching out to selected news outlets prior to WWDC to release quite a lot of information about what is in the pipeline. That in itself is a big change from the past. Check out Daring Fireball for example – Schiller phoned Gruber with a lot of details about the plans for the new App Store.
I hope Apple does make some big improvements to the App Store this year but they wont be the last, the model is clearly the future of software for the foreseeable future and a path of iteration, development and improvement is just what is needed.
1. No one needs to go back to boxed software. Apple didn’t invent digital distribution and besides that isn’t even remotely relevant to the issues with the App Store itself being discussed.
2. The irony that you bring up dongles and anti piracy measures now when we are talking about software that costs on average 99 cents and is generally worth even less. Apple created a first rate DRM system for protecting developers – no one steals the software. Problem is no one buys it either, and when they do they want to pay less than the price of a cup of coffee… I think we were better off with piracy, really I do.
Your entire argument is just an argument against change and against the future. I like the future – its where I intend to spend the rest of my life
Same here. I would even like a future involving writing mobile apps outside of contract/corporate work. But there is basically zero chance to do that and even half way support yourself with it… Or hell, make it even worth the bother at all.
Not necessarily. Even if a price floor had been set, it would simply have adjusted the user’s expectations to that floor. Let’s take your argument of $5. Users would then expect every app to cost $5, instead of $1. It’s a bit better for developers, but not much when you consider that the overall problem would be the same: small developers screwed when compared to larger ones. Users wouldn’t be any more willing to pay realistic prices than they are now.
I get that. But Im not so much worried about relative revenue, my concern is with actual revenue. There is always going to be big players, and they are always going to take the lions share of the market, but a reasonable floor would make it worth while for a lot more developers who are not trying to get rich quick, they just want things to be worth their time and effort…
At $5 (which is still imo very low) That app with 15k total sales I mentioned now made 50k or so in revenue. At least that makes it worth bothering with for your average developer – it covers the cost of development in time and you even earn a fair profit – you might even bother iterating on it and trying to grow your user base.
Sure, the big guys are still going to make most of the profits. My argument is that a $5 price floor in the beginning would have likely suppressed overall sales a bit, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near suppressing it by 5 fold.
Right now the pricing is so low it has basically morphed into a twisted “try before you buy” market – you spend pocket change for the opportunity to try an app, and if you get lucky and the app doesn’t suck you get to keep it for free! That isn’t healthy for anyone but the guys taking 30% off the top…
$5 dollars isn’t much money now a days, but I think an app I spent a month developing should be worth at least as much as a Big Mac combo from McDonalds…
Sorry no that’s not how the world works. Just because you spent a month on something doesn’t mean it’s worth jack shit. You need to create value not just spend time.
Apps like TouchChat sell for $150. Clearly the app store model is not preventing that.
Apple already does set a price floor, and they always have. The price floor is 99 cents in the US (varies slightly in different markets). I just think that is too low.
Your post is an argument against price floors in general. If you want to argue that $1 is somehow better for developers than $5, I’m listening. Otherwise, if you think price floors are bad, go complain to Apple, not to me.
It’s a problem of scale, a single store to serve countless millions is going to be crowded like this.
Not so sure about that. Mobile phones are still very much “toys” compared to actual computers. People don’t want to be as adventurous with trying new software, so they go with whatever their friends have liked etc. Basic iPhones have quite little storage so careful picks are even more important.
[qMobile phones are still very much “toys” compared to actual computers. [/q]
Toys that can do things that the ‘non-toy’ computers cannot do because they are stuffed full of all sorts of sensors that ”non-toy’ computers don’t have and because the toys fit in your pocket and are thus available, and actually used, in lots more places and times than ‘non-toy’ computers.
Of course there are specialist uses where a desktop old style PC is better, but the majority of global computing does not now involve those type of uses. The vast majority ofGlobal computing is conducted on mobile devices with a smaller (and shrinking) sub set where desktop old style PC are used.
The future of computing is not on the desktop.
I’m pretty sure he wasn’t including laptops in the “mobile” category.
As for “specialist” uses, you mean media production and office work?
I see a lot of office work done on tablets these days. Not all of it, but a great deal of it. Not phones though.
And of course office work (by which I suspect you mean the sort of stuff Office gets used for) is just a minor part of modern computing. Computing is happening all around you and everywhere now, some still takes place in offices but most doesn’t. Listening to a lot of fans of old style desktop computing talking about modern computing (i.e. device based computing that billions of people do everyday) it reminds me of the people who looked at the first telephone and thought it would used to listening to music concerts. That’s the thing about paradigm shifts, its not that mobile is better than desktop at everything or even most of what people used desktops for, its that mobile devices create new forms of mass computing which empowers people to do all sorts of things that simply cannot be done with old style desktops systems.
To take just one example. It is clear that modern urban transportation (and probably other stuff like distribution) is being revolutionised by Uber, a use of computing that cannot be done, and is in fact meaningless, in a desktop world. Uber can only exist because of mobile computing devices.
Its not that offices will varnish or desktop PCs will disappear (although they will shrink in number) its that the centre of gravity of computing has moved elsewhere. The action and the mojo has moved on and its not on the desktop anymore.
No argument from me. In fact, I quite agree with you. I was pointing out the flaw in the previous poster’s argument about “office work” because I’ve seen a lot of that stuff moved to mobile, where the previous comment implied that mobile is not suitable for that kind of work. Personally, I embrace it because it makes my job a heck of a lot easier when users aren’t confused about how to use something. Most people pick up mobile systems right away, where as traditional computers seem to give them no end of difficulty. Not having to resolve their confusion means I can concentrate on more critical things with fewer interruptions rather than having to explain, for the thousandth time, how the ribbon in Outlook works (yes, a lot of people are still confused by it).
Apps have much better install/uninstall (and update) mechanisms than most classic programs because of their sandboxed nature. They also come from a trusted, curated source. This has led to much more experimenting, but not to a much broader array of often used programs. After a short testing phase (or sometimes use-case) most apps are removed or remain unused just like on computers a couple remain.
Apps hardly compete with programs, they compete with websites/webapps. That is why appstores on pc’s are not taking off…the websites/webapps work well and don’t require any installation commitment
I hate apps that pop up every time they update and beg you to rate them… which seems to be damn near every third-party app on iOS these days! If it keeps up much longer, I’m going to start rating them all right… with 1 star.
From my experience as an iOS developer I can list some if the problems of the current model.
Advertising is broken, is expensive and inefficient. Most people-myself-included have developed some kind of reflex to ignore non intrusive advertising. Plus companies like Google in order to keep its users happy are ignoring their clients.
Free services and products that rely on selling user data are giving the impresion to people that all software should be free. (Free Windows 10? Free Mac OS?)
Developer oversupply, way to many developers around the globe competing in the same arena. You can blame that on globalization, you can hire cheap labor in countries like India or Eastern Europe.
People use mostly basic smartphone functions like camera contacts notes email chat (either sms or whatsapp) and spend way too much time on facebook, so the market is smaller than you think.
The whole industry is serving itself, it is not making people more productive or efficient. People are wasting a lot on terminals that become outdated devalued really fast.
The world economy is under life support, social security systems are about to collapse, there is no growth, quantitative easing and assistentialism are destroying the economy.
Edited 2016-06-12 06:45 UTC
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Edited 2016-06-13 04:29 UTC