Life and death in the App Store
theverge.com
theverge.com
- The barrier to entry is so low as to be non-existent. We haven't seen a mass distribution channel with entry barriers this low since the lemonade stand.
- Since the above point forces most participants in the market to now compete mostly on price, the race to the bottom of the last decade or so has raised a generation of consumers who now expect software to be free.
- The subtle friction of finding and installing apps has led the average person to basically not bother at all, as we now know most people install zero apps per month. The lions share is now exclusively the domain of those with ridiculous marketing budgets and iffy business practices.
I'm just not sure exactly where we are on the technology curve of App Stores. Are we in the trough of sorrow, where a new horizon of viability and sustainability coupled with lowered expectations is just around the corner? Or will we look back at the App Stores as the AOL of the 2010's? I'd love to hear opinions on the subject.
don't forget the subtle friction of having to pay for stuff, which is another factor triggering the race-to-free.
You accept the friction of paying for a porterhouse steak because no butcher could sell them for less than the marginal cost of producing them and remain viable. Since the marginal cost of producing apps is (essentially) nothing, it's no surprise almost nobody can resist the downward pressure and make a buck off apps.
I know there's a lot of great apps, produced by hard working Programmers. I've just spent so little time in iTunes, I don't even know what you guys are offering.
In all honesty, I don't like iTunes. I liked it in the beginning. The more complicated/flashy it got, the more I used it in emergencies.
I couldn't imagine having a lot of time/money invested in an iTunes app today. I imagine the tides will turn though?
If a new version of Windows comes along there is no guarantee that my software will still work on it. And there is certainly no guarantee that my current version of Windows will work on a replacement machine.
With Android everything is controlled from the store. If there is a officially supported way to transfer apps without re-downloading from Google Play I don't know of it. Also if I want to share an app how would I even do that without lending my phone?
Ours is primarily a Netflix device.
If we had Star Trek style replicators where recipes are protected, how many people would be able to make a living selling lemonade? One of them might sell more, either by chance or because he has a slightly better recipe. So uldn't the money flowing in allow him to spend money improving the product or its marketing, leading to increased sales in a self-reinforcing cycle?
Yes, a few people could make a living selling 'not what everybody drinks' lemonade, but that doesn't quite work that way in software because people do not gain status (yet?) from having that "look how rich I am" app.
Actually, some time ago there was this app [1] that was basically just a background image but the price was set at the maximum allowed at the time in the Apple App Store.
Incredibly, it turns out that it actually sold several times due to people were actually "gaining status" just by having it.
In the end, it was a signal that you could spend 1K USD in a stupid background and it made no difference to you. Kind of the most abstract idea of status in a product that I can think off, i.e. I can just literally waste the money and I can prove it sort of thing
[1] http://gizmodo.com/5033621/99999-iphone-app-i-am-rich-probab...
> Since the above point forces most participants in the market to now compete mostly on price, the race to the bottom of the last decade or so has raised a generation of consumers who now expect software to be free
In India, apps aren't just free. You get hefty discounts if you use apps. Race to the bottom has meant that VC funded business can simply terminate the competition by burning through the investment. The barrier to entry might be lower, but that is setting a potentially dangerous precedent for the app-store economy on a whole, as app-developers continue their focus on acquiring users luring them with discounts, with a view to gain in the long run (which works for the e-commerce companies).
Tech companies like Google, that offer high quality apps for free, have spoilt the regular user-- no one expects to pay even a $1 for an app well-designed and well-built. Games get the money because its addictive and companies like Google haven't invaded that market yet with their free offerings driven by ad-revenues, user-profiling, and vendor lock-in.
'It's only the price of a cup of coffee" does not fly after you've paid for 10 media player apps, none of which fully work or are stable.
It would be nice to use the built in media player, even with all its faults , but unfortunately it is very limited in format support on iOS.
(When looking it up to confirm that it used to be one day, I found out that in August 2014, Google actually bumped it up to 2 hours - but I never found out about the policy change. Two hours isn't really enough time either - I might buy an app at lunch but only get to try it out in the evening, after work. A two hour window still kills impulse purchases.)
It’s a very useful law.
And the result of this we're seeing everywhere now in the IT. Wonder how come your fresh sparkly edition Windows is a turd ? Why you don't get any updates for your Android phone ?
That's why, you get what you pay for.
Ban me, whatever I care, but this is by far the stupidest top comment I have ever heard in HN. If you are still reading basically this is a lie, search for "Mirror app", in summary it has millions of downloads, it just an app that shows your camera, it has nothing new, nothing special, is just that is the first result. It has nothing to do with "unique value", it's all about the sorting algorithm Apple uses. And the same happens if you search "Flash light" and another million searches. Meritocracy is just another myth people like to believe.
That mirror app was created 6 years ago. You can create any trivial app and succeed if you're one of the first in the market.
Developers that understand this are able to make a living on the app store while those that wait for the store to magically make their app successful don't.
As the VC markets cool down we'll those companies that didn't build a company around their apps fail more.
I wrote about this here: https://arielmichaeli.com/making-apps-for-love-and-profit-3b...
I personally think what's happening now is the market maturing. In the long term this will lead to more stability for those who know how to compete.
This is very frustrating because it encourages walled-garden..
Discovery: Google too is an Appstore to most people. You tell well educated people on Desktop to go to Facebook and they do this: Google.com -> Click Search Bar -> Type Facebook -> Click First Link. No matter what first link is. The appstore serves the same purpose to this group.
Launch: If you removed most app icons on people's phone and replace them with web app bookmarks, many will not know the difference. This is a shortcut for them.
http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...
I suspect that the problems of small app developers are much the same as guys on dating sites. All of the discoverability is implemented and controlled by one entity who doesn't depend on your success specifically to make money. They only need just enough success to keep the whole thing running.
I wish now that Jobs had gotten his way in the beginning, and all of the apps would be web apps, and discoverability would be through web links and search engines.
As much as I wish Apple & Google would fix the discoverability problem, I'm not sure it would help much. Discoverability today means finding a crucial pain point and then going out, yourself, engaging customers and explaining how your solution helps them accomplish their goals. There are still profitable niches out there, but you have to do the work of building an actual business and not just an app.
The IPhone ecosystem would be nowhere near what it is today if not for native apps. It would have been a serious mistake. People want native apps because the mobile web sucks for anything a bit more complex than displaying text or simple forms. And web APIs on mobile in general still suck. Caching sucks, The DOM is still slow and cannot deeply interact with phone features or hardware.
The mobile web has failed since native apps are still required. Every web tech base mobile OS have failed. Firefox OS for mobile has failed.
Which is exactly what most apps (not games) do.
Native technology stacks aren't really that great either, and I think that native has some fundamental disadvantages when it comes to performance, especially around graphics.
In my experience it's a trend -- "we want an app" because "apps are cool".
Now the pendulum has swung around again, and customers want native mobile apps because they have fancier animations, are immune to pop-up ads, can access the special hardware on the device, and don't require an Internet connection. There's little developers can do about this, other than wait 15 years for the pendulum to swing the other way.
Then there's the initiative for letting web pages request to be added to the desktop. They tried to make it non-invasive
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing...
Once you have several thousand apps (not to mention 1MM+), it becomes exceedingly difficult to find apps that are relevant to you. Someone might create a better app than the one you have on your phone, or one that you don't even realize you need, but how will you know about it?
If you can only rely on the App Store rankings and search engine, you are going to have to spend alot of time looking through irrelevant results- most people don't have that kind of time.
The result is (as brought up in the article) that app developers need more sophisticated 'growth-hacking' techniques outside of the ecosystem, which tend to be hit or miss depending on some degree of luck.
There have been several app discovery platforms like AppGratis and Chomp, but Apple has shut them all down. Apple may have wanted to preserve the Appstore as the single authority on their apps, but now they have created a more dangerous, and possibly existential crisis for themselves- irrelevance of the app ecosystem.
Why should I create apps (or invest in app developers) if my chance of success is less than 0.1%? As a consumer, I may still buy Apple devices, but it will be less because of the great apps, which will become increasingly scarce.
Looking at this weeks AppStore front page offerings, a lot of them were from the previous week's AppStore offerings; no change essentially. I have slowly stopped going to the store as a source for anything.
What I need is a web page that tells me where to go for XYZ App, who has the newest option, and how much it costs. I bought Assembly the week it came out because it addressed a need of mine for basic graphic design, simply done. Then, I want to say the week after, it was free on the AppStore. I have been burned three times so far by jumping on something only to see it released for free a few weeks later. I AM LOOKING AT YOU ALTO's JOURNEY.
Ultimately, we should all learn from Rovio's trajectory:
1. One-hit wonder
2. Ramp up to find more customers
3. Sales from new customers goes down as saturation sets in
4. New product fails to deliver
5. Turn on existing customers to have them pay a monthly fee to deliver a stable income.
Look at the DayOne's App movement on the AppStore (I love this app, but unfortunately I know they will move to a revenue model after my three years of using their app).
But the App Store’s middle class is small
and shrinking.
Apple has done a lot to make lives better for iOS developers in the last few years. Why they can't invest some of that energy into making the app store a less hostile place for smaller players is a mystery.
Apple still wields a massive security trump card, especially when pitching to enterprises, because with the possible exception of the Nexus, no Android device comes with any commitment by the OEM to providing timely security patches.
I think there is some reluctance in people downloading apps. I personally avoid downloading apps on Android as I don't want them to be cluttered in "My Apps" section of Google Play, and seeing the updates is annoying. It seems silly but I get embarrassed by the low quality spammy apps I have downloaded in the past. Also, having a browser based model would allow for developers to push new releases without an antiquated versioning system. It's inexcusable that Apple has developers wait around a week on average to get a new version to the app store. I appreciate that they have actual people review each app, but 90% of the time is spent in "Waiting for Review" and the actual review process doesn't take long. I don't know if the queue is by design, but it seems excessive.
For your ease, please compare these graphics before and after: http://i.imgur.com/lMwL3kh.png?1
Before shows no brand awareness, the after develops brand awareness.
Here's my 2 cents - Apple could introduce an Indie category/sub-categories. Community could come up with a distinctive micro-icon that represents something as an indie app. Sort of like the tiny Zynga dog icon you see in their apps. Once again, Apple could introduce apps to be flagged as indie by its users. Refine search results by this flag.
I think Apple does their job of promoting really cool indie apps and games. But it has to be outstanding or novel enough for them to pitch it forward.
This is another case of if something is too-good-to-be-true (make millions with little or no capital investment up front), it is indeed too-good. If there's a low barrier to entry, you can bet the competition will grow fierce very quickly.
We have a huge player at top that is collecting most of the benefits while the much smaller players (more and more) below are competing for ever smaller slice of the pie. And the slice was quite small to begin with, because there were thousands and thousands of fellow coders who were doing the same thing you were doing.
Lock-in is bad. As a consumer. And also as a vendor.