Linked List: September 5, 2016

Monday, 5 September 2016

David Smith on Evolving App Store Business Models 

David Smith:

I don’t have solid data going all the way back to 2008 when I launched my first app, but I do from 2012. In the last 4.5 years the split of where my revenue comes from has followed a clear, inexorable march from being paid-based to advertising-based. Starting in 2012 advertising in my apps made up around 10% of sales whereas now it is nearly 80%. That increase has come almost entirely from a near collapse of my paid upfront sales (with my in-app purchase income largely unchanged). […]

As I have looked back on these last few years I’ve come to the conclusion that the change is mostly been in the App Store market, rather than in my own attitudes. In many cases adding advertising to my apps has been something I’ve fought and resisted as long as possible. But in the end the pragmatic answer has been to not swim upstream and instead follow where my customers have moved to.

The market has been pulling me along towards advertising based apps, and I’ve found that the less I fight back with anachronistic ideas about how software “should” be sold, the more sustainable a business I have.

Three thoughts:

  • This jibes with my conclusions about Vesper. There’s still a strong market for paid-up-front Mac apps, but with mobile apps, you really have to treat them more like websites: free to use, with either advertising, paid extras, or both.

  • Smith saw a nice jump in advertising revenue earlier this year when he switched from iAd to AdMob. That means Apple is getting a much lower percentage of the revenue generated by Smith’s apps.

  • I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more popular iPhone apps move toward advertising.

All 25 of Apple’s Dongles in One Place 

Will be at least 26 come Wednesday.

The Talk Show: ‘Way of the Future’ 

Rene Ritchie returns to the show to discuss what we expect at Apple’s upcoming event in San Francisco: new iPhones (without headphone jacks, and with a radical new two-lens camera on the Plus-sized model), Apple Watch 2 (and a new fall lineup of watch bands). We also discuss Samsung’s recall of the Galaxy Note 7 (because of exploding batteries), when we’ll see new Mac hardware and new iPads, and more.

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Android Device Makers Keep Pretending That Android Doesn’t Exist 

Vlad Savov:

I’ve been at IFA, Europe’s biggest tech show, for three days now and I’ve had my eyes filled with a parade of all the shiny, beautiful new technology coming to an Amazon delivery drone near you. Much of that technology is powered by Google’s omnipresent Android software, but you wouldn’t know it from the way the new devices are presented. Android has become many tech companies’ original sin: fundamental to their identity and the character of their products, but buried under a thick veneer of insecure puffery, denial, and evasion.

This is inevitable with a commodity platform like Android. Just like how PC makers can’t brag about running Windows because everyone else runs Windows, the phone makers can’t brag about Android. Even worse, most new Android phones are at least a year behind the latest version. Only Apple can truly promote its software as a differentiating advantage.