The artist in me finds your shovelware business model sad, although my inner accountant nods approvingly.
It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market. If people want to pay $2 for a piece of software, most of that software is inevitably going to be least-common-denominator tat aimed at getting noticed and scoring a quick buck from enough people before it gets lost in a sea of other tat.
It doesn't really matter any more whether it started because of the app store model, or the early developers choosing very low prices like many other new businesses even though they could have charged more, or dare I say cynically pitching instant gratification to a market full of young people with shiny new phones and some but not very much money. The culture today says mobile apps are cheap, and the market will get what it pays for.
It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now. Then again, perhaps that is for the best, and software that solves harder problems or provides deeper functionality or offers large volumes of good quality content is better presented via some other medium anyway.
> It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market
This. Where $3 are considered a high price you realistically can only produce apps that are worth their low price.
If you try anything different - making a great polished product and trying to strike a hit - all power to you. But then you are playing a lottery and not doing business.
> It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now.
This is what drove us (luckily I must say now) away from mobile to web based SaaS. When we build a mobile app now it's only a complement to our SaaS service and usually is given away for free to get users for our service.
Sadly the geek in me hates the web development stack ... but my inner business guy keeps the geek at bay ;)
Comments
The artist in me finds your shovelware business model sad, although my inner accountant nods approvingly.
It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market. If people want to pay $2 for a piece of software, most of that software is inevitably going to be least-common-denominator tat aimed at getting noticed and scoring a quick buck from enough people before it gets lost in a sea of other tat.
It doesn't really matter any more whether it started because of the app store model, or the early developers choosing very low prices like many other new businesses even though they could have charged more, or dare I say cynically pitching instant gratification to a market full of young people with shiny new phones and some but not very much money. The culture today says mobile apps are cheap, and the market will get what it pays for.
It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now. Then again, perhaps that is for the best, and software that solves harder problems or provides deeper functionality or offers large volumes of good quality content is better presented via some other medium anyway.
> It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market
This. Where $3 are considered a high price you realistically can only produce apps that are worth their low price.
If you try anything different - making a great polished product and trying to strike a hit - all power to you. But then you are playing a lottery and not doing business.
> It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now.
This is what drove us (luckily I must say now) away from mobile to web based SaaS. When we build a mobile app now it's only a complement to our SaaS service and usually is given away for free to get users for our service.
Sadly the geek in me hates the web development stack ... but my inner business guy keeps the geek at bay ;)
Curious - why does the geek in you hate the web dev stack?