At WWDC, Apple reported that they’ve paid out $70 billion to developers, with 30% of that ($21 billion!) in the last year. That’s a huge spike, and surprising to me because it didn’t seem like my friends and I were spending more on apps last year. But that’s anecdotal, so I wondered: where are these revenues coming from? I opened App Store to browse the top grossing apps.
The controlled, walled garden at work.
A classic example of why Apple should have never followed Google. Hopefully this slaps them back to reality.
As much as a like Android, Google really need to get the Play Store under control. It’s just an endless shitshow of terrible apps and i’m not talking about the quality of the apps (although that is often also terrible). I’m talking about the many, many apps that are exist only to send your private data to advertisers or is an endless display of ads and nothing else.
And lets not even get into the insane number of obviously fake reviews.
Edited 2017-06-13 04:53 UTC
I’m really considering just getting one of the new Nokia 3310 phones. With the exception of my smart watch and my glucose meter syncing data with my phone, I really could give two shits about most of the stuff on it. Maybe I’ll keep my Note 4 as a separate PDA style thing, and only use the dumb phone for calls…
And to think, apple’s actually profiting from this with their 30% cut. When money comes too easily, they tend to stop caring about quality. This is why the market needs competition between app stores.
I could not agree more!
(BTW, I don’t usually post just for a +1, but I keep running out of points trying to up-vote you, and monopolies/mono-cultures just get under my skin.)
while i agree that the problem here runs deeper, at least in europe, getting your money back from apple (for app or in-app purchases) within 14 days of buying it, takes just a few clicks.
Competition might fix this in the long run. But in the short run we need government regulations, and in the very short run litigation against Apple.
From the summary I didn’t get the idea at all that the article was about SCAM software that had even entered the top 10 of a category (productivity apps) and wasn’t stopped at all by the walled garden.
And if this kind of crap is already in the top 10, that really means that there are hardly any apps worth getting in the app stores!
Most important apps that everyone gets are free.
Apparently apps like this trash are at the top 10 level.
That means that there is either an incredibly long tail of apps that are generating very small profits, or that the very few top paid apps are generating all the profits. I am guessing it is the latter and that it just a few games and subscription services that are raking in the bulk of the profits. I know a lot of app-developers, but none that can make a living out of it except for “build tailor-made solutions for a company”
The Power Law in action. Unless you are in the Top 5 for yor category you are probably making SFA
Edited 2017-06-13 10:05 UTC
A quick search will give many more results than this.
People should put better value in what they are paying for and know what the app is actually doing.
Reality is .. they don’t.
It’s no different than receiving phone calls from <Company> support to fix your computer for a couple hundred bucks.
At the end of day the problem for Apple is: how profitable it will be for us to hire people to keep higher quality apps in our playstore comparing to keeping apps that don’t harm the device and bring constant revenue to us?
Sadly user stupidity pays by itself at the end of the day.
Edited 2017-06-14 11:11 UTC