We're Not Paying Enough For Apps

Let me get this straight, we're not paying enough for apps already? Hell, I think ninety percent of the app store (Android or Apple) is packed full of paid apps that aren't worth $0.01.

Our argument proceeded along two tracks. First, the sales pitch. He peppered me with reasons that ShareMouse is better than any other paid or free mouse-sharing solution. It's easy to set up, it runs onMac, Windows, and Linux together, there's a portable version, you can drag files across machines, etc. All true. But I still wasn't ready to part with my $50 for this little utility when the price point in my head was $0. And when there's so much great stuff in the App Store for $4.99.

Click to expand...

no link?

I think this post might just refer to itself.

Good applications are worth the money they cost, the problem is that so many of the applications are shovelware, that are not worth the opportunity cost of downloading, installing and trying them.

I believe this is the link Steve was looking for:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57384178-250/were-not-paying-enough-for-apps/

Anyway, I believe the fart app developers would say otherwise.

I think part of what keeps prices low is the fatigue users have from having to hun through all the utter garbage to find the few gems. After downloading several dozen shit apps, and blowing a few bucks on paid apps, no one is willing to risk more than $1 on yet another app promising to be worth the price.

If apple did a better job of screening out the cruft people might be willing to spend more on the apps that make it through.

Oh forgot to mention, Slingmedia doesn't seem to have that problem, they charge about $30 for their app which is a glorified streaming client, which is an addon to the slingbox. The thing it's it's another $30 each if you want to put it on your iphone, ipad, android phone, android tablet, kindle fire, palm, symbian, WP7... So umm yeah there isn't any problem with that at all.

ahahhaha Steve is slacking, no link and the discuss link in homepage redirects to forums and not to post

I remember when the (always incredibly stupid and short sighted) tech pundits on all of the worthless blogs (you know, Engadget, Slashgear, the like) were talking about how Nintendo needs to change its business strategy from producing first party hardware and selling first party games on their hardware, to simply embracing the different App stores and selling them for like 5 bucks or so.

Their response? The app stores are making everyone believe that paying anything above a dollar or two is completely out of the question for software or games. That these prices were devaluing software and games. DS games may cost 30 to 40 dollars but they last dozens of hours, can (depending on their genre) have intricate stories and plots. Great characters, great action, great combat and above all else, the controls with which to do it with. You can't make money off a game like that by selling it for just a few dollars. It doesn't work that way.

Compare that to Blackberry apps, which are all way overpriced for what you get, and don't work about 3/4 of the time. Fucking RIM.

It sounds like that application does exactly what the author wants and provides a lot of value.

Apparently not $50 worth of value though.

This is the free market in action - don't fix what is not broken.

Solidstate89 said:

I remember when the (always incredibly stupid and short sighted) tech pundits on all of the worthless blogs (you know, Engadget, Slashgear, the like) were talking about how Nintendo needs to change its business strategy from producing first party hardware and selling first party games on their hardware, to simply embracing the different App stores and selling them for like 5 bucks or so.

Their response? The app stores are making everyone believe that paying anything above a dollar or two is completely out of the question for software or games. That these prices were devaluing software and games. DS games may cost 30 to 40 dollars but they last dozens of hours, can (depending on their genre) have intricate stories and plots. Great characters, great action, great combat and above all else, the controls with which to do it with. You can't make money off a game like that by selling it for just a few dollars. It doesn't work that way.

Click to expand...

They actually CAN make money doing that by simply re-releasing games that are already finished Like gameboy advance games that most kids these days haven't played.

Most mobile apps don't have enough functionality to justify a high price if any. At best they do a marginal job at something that you can easily find a free program to do very well on your computer.

For the most part mobile devices aren't really capable of doing anything that would be worth spending a lot of money on software to do. There are exceptions, but these are going to be nice products.

Truthfully, there is a big problem with the price of mobile apps. Small developers can't really make any money unless they happen to strike the perfect storm of conditions. If I sell 300 copies of my app for $2 (This actually isn't a hypothetical) I get $210. I don't think there is any software on earth that costs $210 to develop. At my day job we bill out at $125/hour and we're considered inexpensive. While $20/app wouldn't have made me a big chunk of cash it would have at least motivated me to write another app.

This is why a lot of apps are either written on the side by developers that work full time. If App prices were a bit higher we could afford to spend more time working on them, testing and overall created a better product. Writing good software takes a lot of time, and time is money. What low app prices mean for the consumer is that the apps that are out there are going to be cheap crap, because quality software can't be produced that cheaply.

This share mouse thing actually makes me think there might be a market for a $10/computer clone. Hmm....

How'd you get $210? Apple takes 30%, not 60.

So, the apps they are talking about are computer programs (programs not for mobile phones, but for PC's or Macs).

Like, the ones some of us play games on. I think some of those might retail for more than the 50 bucks the article writers were bitching about.

I will never write a mobile app unless its

1) a spare time project that I want to use for myself
2) app prices go up considerably
3) its a value added app for another application (such as a website or something)

it is just not worth my time and effort. The biggest point in that article is support. If you write an app and you want to have a good reputation as a developer and get good reviews, you're going to have to support it. That takes time. Time spent supporting is time you can't spend writing new features or different apps.

Heck, look at it this way. As an experienced developer you can easily make a comfortable 70,000 a year working at a corporation. In addition to that, you'll get health insurance and potentially other monetary benefits. Let's assume you develop an app, let's say you sell it for 2 dollars a piece (which is shockingly high in an app store) how many copies a month do you have to sell to maintain the same standard of living?

You have to sell a little over 2900 copies PER MONTH to cover yourself. This is for a one man development team. Even at a paltry (for an experienced developer) 30000 a year, you have to sell 1250 copies per month. If this app is non-trivial (some call that useful) you will have to answer questions and offer support. This is NOT a sustainable business model. It relies on a continued accumulation of users which will inevitably mean you will be unable to both support and develop new applications. If you start hiring staff to support your app (which you should) it only increases your costs. On top of this all, in the new mobile business model people expect the newest version for free.

Eventually you stop getting new users, but still have to provide support to the existing users. Combine this with the low probability of getting enough views to drive those sales and you have a business model that doesn't work. Why anybody would want to develop an application and sell it for less than 15-20 dollars is beyond me.

It ought never be forgotten that the primary business model for Apple has always been "less for more." Any business that emulates something Apple does will inevitably fall into that mode--which works best, of course, for Apple (or the owner of the app store.) Therefore, it isn't surprising to find that the "home of the $1 app" works better for Apple/store owner than either for customers or developers. I'd much rather pay $30 for software that is worthwhile than pay $1 for software that has little to no functionality. And the idea that you could very likely spend $30 for 30 pieces of software that offer almost no aggregate functionality is frightening. If the trend continues, then it won't be long before "smartphones" begin to lose their mass appeal--which I believe is mainly faddish, anyway.

I don't think many people have quite come to terms with how much more attractive the environment of the smartphone makes the traditional desktop computing environment appear. When it comes to the economics, reliability, and speed of Internet connectivity, the traditional desktop computing environment clobbers the smartphone--which is remarkable, in a sense, that the desktop market should prevail as clearly as it does in every single category *aside* from mobility. In terms of software availability and overall quality, by comparison the desktop computing environment puts the smartphone back into the stone age.

People are at the moment paying a significant premium for smartphone mobility (although the cell phone market is still overwhelmingly dominated by the sale of "dumb" cell phones), and my guess is that's because the smartphone market is still only a couple of years old. The "newness" hasn't quite worn off, yet... A couple more years of grossly inflated phone and network pricing, along with the promise of cheap apps that manage to under deliver at even $1 a piece, will do little except to draw people to desktop computing's far superior price/performance ratios. It's actually quite a stark contrast.

Cry me a river, devs. Really. Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay. The app store is good for two extremes: big companies who can release ports and eat the cost or small out-of-work devs hoping to get lucky and make it big or build their cv.

If nobody can make money from apps development will stop and they will go away. Very simple.

For right now people seem willing to give their time so it's working. Kinda lottery mentality I guess.

IMHO app prices are right were they should be. In my case it cuts way back on piracy. For $5 I'll pay for apps just for convenience sake. For $50 I'll pirate most and only pay for the ones I use a lot.