The iOS Economy, Updated | Hacker News Reader

The iOS Economy, Updated

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73 pointstim_sw32 comments

My understanding was that while there's more money being made in Apps, it's getting more and more concentrated into less and less apps and larger and larger companies, so that the overwhelming majority of apps released nowadays make very little money.

Especially for independent developers I've heard there are much better opportunities on other platforms, for the most part. For others here that are still in iOS app development or know people still in it, is that the case? I've been out of it for a few years, so I'm not really sure.

What other platoforms have better opportunities for indie developers?

For applications, I've heard more devs are going back to web first, but I'm mainly familiar with the game scene, and indie game developers have had a lot better luck with Steam, the Vita, and most recently the Nintendo Switch than on mobile for the past several years.

That used to be the case for Steam if you could get your game in, but the impression I’ve heard more recently is that it’s become more of a dumpster fire of unfinished shovelware. Throw something together from unity asset store pieces, call it early access, and see how many suckers you can get.

There are occasional breakout hits, but discoverability for indie titles is minimal. Plus their revenue cut is (maybe not confirmed, but widely speculated to be) the same as Apple’s 30%.

Why not try PWA. I built a marketplace app and used gravity forms and you get camera in the browser. Unless you need device hardware, you can get away with PWA. The web is much larger then app islands with 30% fees. Then the bi-weekly updates. Then you get a message " this developer needs to update their app for iOS (latest version) jesus.

camera in the browser

How so? Do you mean through UIImagePickerController or AVCaptureDevice?

Even with the latest iOS 11 release I haven't seen AVCaptureDevice available to WebKit anywhere. getusermedia isn't supported and I've yet to see a successful implementation of WebRTC on WebKit [1].

Maybe I missed something. Would be great to be able to do that finally.

[1]https://webkit.org/blog/7763/a-closer-look-into-webrtc/

we used gravity forms for one gig. On mobile a mobile browser say an iphone, you can take snap a pic with a camera and upload / attach it and send it via the form. That was our basic need / feature for this particular MVP.

i found this article in stakoverflow: In 2015 Google introduced a new approach for developing web apps for Android: progressive web apps. One can create an application that will look like a native application, will be able to use device's hardware like camera and accelerometers, receive push notifications, have a launcher icon, work in offline, store local data, etc.

Yea Android supports all of that including camera through getusermedia, iOS doesn't.

So i tested the form. OnClick attach a pic / or take a pic in iOS i took a pic and attached and on submit it sent the form with image to the email the form was going too. Is that not it?

Yea that's UIImagePickerController, but obfuscated by whatever other wrapper you're using. You can do that to transfer images or upload images through iOS, basic file picker/transfer basically but doesn't invoke any other frameworks or deeper integration. What you can't do is get the video feed into a WebKit browser. It's a business decision Apple did to prevent image based Web Apps on iOS. They want them all on native apps, though we might see it with WebRTC integration.

oh gotcha, yes my use case was very simple. in iOS chrome / safari after filling out basic form fields, name / email then upload pic / attach image ( pulls up the camera / attach image icons) Select or take a pic with camera Upload / attach pic Send / Submit form.

That was all i needed. Then that image comes through email. For a local messenger start up in NYC. Pick up / delivery. Customer needs upload a pic of the bags being picked up then delivered to destination. All local / same day stuff.

I maybe didn't need all the other stuff, just enough to solve this specific problem in a mobile web app. Customer was happy with the demo i showed them. Got the gig.

Support for HTML5 audio is junk on iOS: http://debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com/2016/12/13/its-almo...

Great time to get into apps as everyone is so focused on Blockchain. By the time that bubble implodes, investors will want a brand new, fresh, ready-to-be-invested in app to throw their money at.

Ths article and it's predecessor note the relative puny Android market and rewards (though not nearly as thorough comparison of the recent trajectories of the two ecosystems) - what is it going to take for Android to turn around?

I think Google is addressing this with Progressive Web Apps. There's a lot of work yet to be done, but web sites that implement native features such as home screen presence, notifications and (key to making money) integration with Android Pay have a lot of potential. The problem is that it doesn't compare exactly with the iOS model, so everyone assumes it is worse. But completely removing app download friction from the process could be huge.

That is what Android Instant Apps are for.

They are, but I can't remember the last time I saw one in the wild. To my (not necessarily well informed!) view, PWAs have a lot more traction.

Or you could just focus on making money, rather than endlessly chasing rounds of investor money. Investment shouldn't be an end goal.

A giant market with a single gatekeeper.

Does anyone have thoughts on alternative app stores like Google Play or Amazon? The markets are obviously much smaller, but there's also much less competition.

Doesn't Android have like 85% of the global market? Doesn't that make a Google Play MUCH larger potential market?

No, because most of that volume is driven by super cheap phones, and their owners spend far less on apps. iOS phones are all high end devices.

I'm not sure a lot of developers make money on iOS. I think it's now larger companies. There are still millions of apps so discoverability is impossible. You can't spend much to advertise a free app, and you can't really charge money.

I wrote a simple Word Search app a couple months ago, localized it, and have had zero downloads outside the US and Canada.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-search/id1311744...

In 2010, I whipped up a quick little language app on Android and saw several thousand global downloads within a month( there were about 10,000 apps at the time).

Not saying anything about larger point but iOS in 2018 vs Android in 2010 seems like an Apples to Rutabegas comparison.

>There are still millions of apps so discoverability is impossible

I know it doesn't really help, but Apple has started to remove old, abandoned apps.

> ... not sure developers make money on iOS ... it’s now larger companies

So, just because the company is large, doesn’t mean an AI is writing the software. The large company developers make money on iOS, as a steady paycheck instead of a fingernail biter.

Given comparison between film and iOS industries, it’s a little like working for Peter Jackson and Weta Digital instead of hoping to pull of the next Alive in Joburg at home.

No, less. Android users also mostly do not pay, especially in comparison to iOS users.

This is why I said, "potential" market.

If you're defining the potential of the market by the number of people, then yes, it's a potentially huge market.

If you're defining the potential of a market by the amount of money the population of people are putting into it, then no, not so much.

(I tend to go for the latter definition, personally)

It does, it can be harder to sell on app on play though.

Also comparing marketshare does not paint the whole picture.

iOS phones tend to be costlier than Android ones. It would be probably better to compare their sales for similarly priced phones.

IIRC (and I have got to say I have not looked at these stats in a while), costly Android phones sell a bit more than iOS ones, but are small fraction of these 85%

A lot of the phones are like the Alcatel Pop Star 2 on prepaid plans. They are Android phones, but really not very good at running any app. But, when they are being sold for under $50 its understandable and fills a nice market niche.

for reference: https://www.walmart.com/browse/cell-phones/straight-talk-cel...

The market might be larger but it is becoming more and more difficult to be an indie developer in the ever-increasingly saturated IOS App Store.

Large majority of that are games. I wonder what % is that. 80? Or 90?

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