There's a slightly more complex factor. Economics work differently in different countries. It's not that there are less rich persons, but that being rich is less expensive because goods in general are cheaper: housing, food, transportation, etc. If you sell an article at the same price in such a country, it's like selling an iPhone in USA for $4k. Even middle class can't afford it, or even if they can, they would choose to expend the money on something else with better value.
In Spain we experience such an effect. We share the currency with our northern neighbourghs, but salaries are roughly half (guess what I'm doing next month). I own a €107 Xiaomi. I could buy an iPhone but I prefer to expend the (minimum config) 1159 - 107 € in better things:
This applies to Harley Davidson motorcycles (which I would guess are pretty rare in India) just as much as it applies in iPhones.
Second question (from complete ignorance on Indian culture), what does “localization” for the Indian market mean when there are at least 22 different languages there?
Localization for India is complex. To start with, you need to use their national rupee symbol. But also, many devices in the region may not have any Indian languages, or may only have Hindi; so you may need to go beyond the system apis. Some users don't know how to find the system settings, or aspirationally want to use English, but aren't very fluent. Literacy in general is a challenge. English tech words are commonly used in everyday speech in other languages, so you may not want to translate them.
Amongst the part of the population who can afford an iPhone?
That's like saying hiring locksmiths is pricier than buying a crowbar.
Yeah, both will get you in doors, but one is a bit not legal.
Implying that not buying into a more expensive platform with more expensive software is illegal is just wrong.
This drives the price down for other apps because not only do you have to compete with free versions that may be worse, but free, you also have to compete with a free version of your own app because someone distributed it for free.
And yet you immediately jump to conclusion that everyone is doing something illegal.
I do pay for services that have an iOS app but they are not just iOS apps. That includes Office365, Evernote, DirecTVNow, Hulu, Netflix (not really, its free with T-mobile), Apple Music, and so guess I could include various streaming apps that I can use via my DirecTV login.
I would have paid for Overcast to support Marco, but he started his own podcast display ad network and he monetizes that way. I usually pay to turn off ads on apps I use frequently but I find topic relevant podcast ads so relevant, I consider the ads to be a feature.
I’ve always said it was a fool’s errand trying to make money on $0.99 downloads. Either create a service that generates reoccurring revenue or develop apps for B2B deployments where a company is willing to pay a lot of money for custom deployments. That’s where I made money working for companies doing mobile development.
He does have plenty of money to spend on crappy apps though, much more than your average teenager that's being spoiled by his parents.
Just saying, countries like India are growing markets and when Apple will want to enter it, it will find it is already too late. Because smartphones are becoming cheap commodities, just like PCs before them and in the future the luxury items will no longer be smartphones.
- Dual SIM phones. Most people have multiple SIM, mostly prepaid and recharge them based on the cheapest offer. Incoming calls are free. So if a provider has better offer on outgoing calls, that sim is used that month for making calls and next month they use the other number.
- SD card support. Best selling phones support this. People carry lots of movies and music with them, mostly pirated and takes lot of space. And you can normally buy SD cards pre-filled with popular songs and movies that you just insert into your phone when traveling.
- 3.5 inch headphone jack. Yes, people need this. Bluetooth sets are costly.. $30 for bt headphone, compare that to a $100 xiaomi phone.
- And of course, side loading of apps. Android allows this, iphone no. So you get apps from some one and just use it, without going to play store.
With Android phones already being much less secure than iPhones (and doubly so because the cheaper Androids often run older versions) that seems like a terribly easy exploit vector.
A simple one is why is there even a permission to let an app read and write all contents on an SD card instead of only allowing apps to read files that a user specifically chooses from a file picker? Or worse case read and write from your photo library or music library.
Besides that, Apple can’t control the entire worlds cellular and WiFi coverage. Some parts of countries only have 3G, some buildings only have shity WiFi. However, Apple can control how their iPhone’s storage performs by not allowing you to use crappy SD cards and just having you opt for more internal storage.
On second thought, you can’t even read media files securely on Android....
https://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/...