A slew of opinions have hit the web over the past few days directly surrounding the methods behind Apple’s App Store. Primarily focused around pricing, distribution and marketing, the debates have grown heated, and Apple has remained silent.
After established iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry wrote a personal letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a discussion thread erupted on MacBlogz between some talented iPhone developers and Hockenberry himself. Some accuse Hockenberry of whining, while others understand his frustration with the App Store’s methods. Still, most of the consensus remains focused around the idea that the App Store is a distribution model, not a marketing tool.
Even though it may seem like Hockenberry’s “Dear Steve” letter is focused around the marketing problems some have faced with their apps, the underlying issues revolve around Apple’s entire policies with the way they manage the App Store. Something all too familiar to anyone that spends time inside the app store.
App Cubby
“There have been a lot of uninformed people spouting nonsense about Craig Hockenberry’s “Ringtone Apps” blog post, so I thought I’d set the record straight with some real numbers from the App Cubby bank account. There are some amazing success stories on the App Store, but for every successful developer there are quite a few who haven’t come close to recouping their investment of time and/or money,” App Cubby explains.
The graph below represents App Cubby’s direct impact/revenue measured when their app “Gas Cubby” was featured as a “Staff Pick” in Apple’s app store.
App Cubby’s total income since launch has been nearly $65,000. This comes from funds borrowed from family members ($24k), actual income from App Store sales ($32k), free AdMob advertising ($5k), and selling one of his cars to keep the company going ($4k). The total expenses also equal roughly $65,000, so it seems that so far they’ve won by breaking even. If you’re wondering, the $65k in expenses went to programmers ($29k), personal salary ($15k), marketing ($7k), infrastructure ($5k), artists ($4k), $3,200 to charity and a $360 monthly payment plan to pay back family members.
Hockenberry avoided such specifics when referring to Iconfactory’s applications, but neither developer held back sharing their personal opinions. In general, intentions are healthy and positive. Concern for Apple’s App Store is well founded, and Apple needs to take note, as we’re sure they have.
iPhone developers should not push marketing and advertising onto Apple in the hopes that their app will be chosen for “Staff Pick.” They should take measures in their own hands, just like many already have. However, Apple could do a much better job with the App Store. Aside from poor management and the lack of transparency in rejecting applications, the store needs to be much more organized. Developers need to feel like they have more of a fighting chance, without having to rely on an Apple staff member to choose a particular application as their “favorite.”
19 Comments to “App Store Issues Get Heated, Apple Remains Silent”
I agree with most of what’s being said here. The person from App Cubby is hard to take seriously. Money from his family into this business endeavor? Like $4k? Why is this even being mentioned?
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@Adam: Not everyone can afford to take out professional and business loans from the bank. $4k+ from his family should definitely be counted as real money towards the company and development of the Cubby apps.
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“Developers need to feel like they have more of a fighting chance, without having to rely on an Apple staff member to choose a particular application as their “favorite.” YESSSSS !!! EXACTLY !!!
It can’t be ALL on Apple. That is just lop-sided. Besides, App Cubby developer needs to understand that $4k from his family shouldn’t necessarily be counted in that $65k. (it’s not being taxed, after all).
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alert(”Boo!”)
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@John: Boo? I don’t think so. This needs to be talked about. Apple has a great platform and it’s being treated like a neglected step child.
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@Adam.
you should read more carefully before you decide he isn’t credible . The 4k you mistakenly note as being a family loan is actually from the sale of an asset (in this case, a car). This is certainly something that should be included in the books of a sole proprietorship.
In reference to the family loan, I wouldn’t have mentioned that it was a family derived personal loan, I would list it as private capital, or personal loan. All of this is semantics though, as a loan of 24K is a significant portion of the listed startup and production costs, and will have to be reported in taxes (@jojo)
-bill
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@bill: I agree with you man. $4,000 is a significant amount of money. Why would they think it doesn’t get taxed? Of course it does. I think every penny related to anything surrounding the development/business side of the application (AppCubby in this case), should be included in the financial reports. Bottom Line.
On another note, Apple changing the app store, or accepting “Pull My Finger” into a new category just makes frustrates me further. This does NOT help the situation at all. It merely applies a band-aid to an open wound. The entire dev community needs a homebase.
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The biggest probel I see witht he apps store is a complete dearth of search options. Unless it’s in Staff pics, or top 25, I usually won’t see it or know about it unless I hear about it on another site.
What I want is an option to view all apps added in last day, 3-days, week, month, 3-month.
As it stands, it sux to find new apps,a dn I’m sure there are apps I would pick up if I knew about them, but I have neithe the time nor patience to wade through every app every week or month hunting ofr apps I haven’t seen yet and aren’t on the front page
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I don’t think this has anything to do with any one person being wrong or right about the app store situation. It has much more to do with Apple not being engaged with the developer community about these types of concerns. At this point people should know that those are the rules of the game when they sign up so it is a matter of seller/developer beware.
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Apple needs a social network for iPhone developers to connect.
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I find appshopper (http://appshopper.com/) a lot of help in finding what is being released and changed every day. Why Apple doesn’t have such a thing is beyond me.
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Does it really take $65k to make the apps that they did? Seriously. Aren’t these the type of apps you expect from a student working part time in their basement during school?
Where is $4000 worth of art in those apps?
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Probably the biggest lesson learned from this and from hearing from iPhone Dev’s is to not develop apps for the iPhone if you want to make money.
The figures listed in the article are dismal and unless you want to be a one man shop, revenue numbers like that are never going to get you anywhere. Have any more than 2 or 3 companies/developers done more than 150k in revenue? If not, then thats just sad… even if you have hardly any expenses or costs, you would still be left with hardly anything.
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This cracks me up… people think that just because you have the opportunity to build and sell your app, that Apple has some requirement to give you a fighting chance? That is a bunch of BS
one of the things about the american dream is that you have the OPPORTUNITY to do whatever you want. That does not mean that someone else will make it easy for you!!!
if you can afford to build an app and you do crappy advertizing then you will not make money!! also if your app is not a ground breaking app or is just not cool enough to make it as “the coolest app that ever was” then you will not make any money!!! its the opportunity not the guarantee!
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^^Exactly.
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@Jason: Right on brother! Makes sense to me.
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$3500 to charity… man, I’d be pretty annoyed if I was the family member who’d loaned $24,000 and was getting paid back at the rate of $360, but the company could find the money to make a $3500 donation to charity…
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@Todd @Andrew, you seem to have latched on to the hidden problem. Sadly appshopper.com would be able to deflect only a tiny fraction of the traffic that appstore attracts. That is the problem with 3rd party sites. They are very good but the majority visits the main site. The basic problem is how the apps are presented. How can they be searched. Take for instance the last.fm model, where a track is equivalent to an app, an album or group is equivalent to a developer and then compare the built in search and social networking, there is no match. Not that last.fm is decent. With all the Web 2.0 power and user data at their disposable, the management of these sites score 1 or 2 out of 10 in my book. Such sites are massively under utilized. The only theory I can come up with is that we live in an era where the web is slowly killing brick and mortar. The rate at which it is doing so depends on the how abstractable the product or service is. Naturally, the powers that be work in the opposite direction because brick and mortar would always be more profitable for them.
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the app store isn’t even a year old. give apple some time to sort things out. they deserve some credit for trying to create a system where folks can create 3rd party apps with an installer that doesn’t brick the phone. sorting out categories, rankings, ratings etc is going to take some time. but Apple is trying. even the free promo codes move is an attempt to help with marketing which should not be all on Apple to do. and yet some folks are just posting their apps and doing nothing to promote their stuff.
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