Is the AppStore game still worth playing? – a story of success and failure
AppStore is 16 months old and, ever since the beginning, the web has been filled with iPhone developers crying like babies about Apple’s strict policies or with Apple’s struggle to keep Google (their most voracious enemy) out of their territory. Trust me, Apple’s approval system is the SMALLEST of the problems plaguing the AppStore. And developers should be really worried about something else.
Once upon a time, over 1 year ago, when I first started development for the iPhone, I did a simple market research trying to pick the best niche(at that time, iTunes was displaying the number of apps in each AppStore category). From over 11000 apps at that time, about 6000 were games, followed by 3000 entertainment apps. There were some 500-1000 utility apps, with the remaining 1000-1500 apps distributed among the remaining categories: Sports, News, Weather, Photography, Reference, etc. There were a total of 100-150 ebook apps, with 1-2 new ones being added daily, which meant that a book was exposed on the first page of the Books section in iTunes for about half a week, with around 100 sales meanwhile and a average profit of $200 per book over the product’s lifetime.
So I started developing my TouchBooksReader (TBR) framework(which grew incrementally from a simple table view with HTML chapters, to a ebook reader powerhorse allowing bookmarks, variable font sizes, autoscroll, autobookmark, landscape reading and more) and the rest is history: over the past year I used the successive TBR) versions of to develop over 60 ebooks(mostly paid apps, using common domain literature, but also some free apps for contemporary authors wanting to promote their new novels). The most memorable and successful of them are probably know by some: Self Help Classics(several times #1 paid book in the US, Canada or Australia), Asia Wisdom Collection or Horror Classics – ebook collections at the price of a single book, powered by TBR and tuned for a great reading experience.
Unfortunately, as time went by, ebooks started to grow as a niche on the AppStore and currently books are the most populated(not popular, though) category : over 40000 ebooks slighlty outnumber even the games. As a result sales went down – way down. A ebook published now is lucky to see a return of $50 over one year of existence, with most of them stuck at around $20 average total earnings. While this is still enough to make a profit for companies in India or China with tens of low-wage workers pushing tens of automatically-generated ebooks to Apple’s reviewers, it’s impossible for a developer in a normal country to make a living this way. Just one of the side effects of the long-tail theory. And, sure enough, with each thousand of ebooks published every couple of days, the sales of existing ones grow even smaller.
Games are in an even worse situation: unlike ebooks, there’s little (or no) reusable code between game apps, involving much greater costs besides the development ones (paying a graphic designer to create some nice art, a sound designer for the sound effects, etc). My Halloween-themed casual game, “Day of the Flying Pumpkins“, developed during 1 month of full time work, has brought $21 in revenue so far, with an extra $0.67 earned by the free, advertising supported version. Considering the time invested, and the money I paid for the high-quality graphics provided by a Filipino graphic designer, to say this project was a complete failure would be a major understatement. Numbers coming from another game Mika’s Gem Run(free, also advertising supported), developed in the course of two weeks, are in the same range.
This is not a cry-baby post where I’d be complaining that my not-so-great games or apps are not selling. It is rather a post about independent developers being unable to see their work paying off, because of the too many apps in the AppStore and the obsolete structure of this one.
So what’s left to do? If you are a big publisher(or a small but already famous one), the iPhone development game is still playable. All it takes is a press release to TouchArcade, TUAW or Gizmodo, and your next app or game will be promoted like hell even before it gets approved. Just take a look at Voices from TapTapTap, #1 paid app after only 4 days since the release. As good as the app might be, being featured on Gizmodo and several other high-traffic blogs on the day of release couldn’t have hurt.
Obviously not all iPhone indie developers were born with PR skills(if they did, they wouldn’t be developers in the first place), not all of them have marketing/PR or otherwise well connected in the online world associates. This, in my humble opinion, is the biggest problem with the AppStore as it is – it’s no longer indie developer friendly.
The AppStore structure, which worked just fine when there were only a couple of thousands apps overall, is simply no longer working when it has 100000 apps, with ten thousand more being added daily. Categories have become too cluttered and subcategories are now a must that Apple refuses to implement. Sure, Apple did make attempts to improve app discovery using Genius recommendations, but Genius works by recommending apps that other people have purchased. When the average new app(one that doesn’t have a strong PR team behind) gets purchased by around 5 people, Genius will be useless.
What AppStore needs badly is a complete restructuring, QUICKLY – before unsatisfied indie developers(me included) decide it might be more profitable to migrate to other platforms. I’ve already named subcategories(and, while we’re at it, new categories altogether) as one of the things that would quickly improve the AppStore. Identifying junk apps (based on users ratings, for instance) and moving them to special subcategories would be a much needed measure of de-cluttering the AppStore(while giving a fair chance of exposure even to junk apps). Tag clouds inside the subcategories, user votes and comments in a Digg-like system would be some others low-hanging fruit that could help the market.
Last but (most importantly) not the least, Apple should take measures to re-list updated apps. If you’re not aware of the issue, a couple of weeks ago, AppStore stopped listing updated apps in the recent apps sorted by release date section. This is a critical game change for AppStore, where updating an app was the single tool developers had to increase an app’s exposure. Removing app updates from the listings gives developers no more incentive to improve an app whatsoever. If my app didn’t sell in the first place, and I’ve already lost money developing it, why on earth would I want to lose more money updating it, if there’s no incentive to do so?
Having a latest updates list on each of the AppStore sections is unanimously considered by developers as the best idea – it prevents cluttering of “latest releases” list but still gives the needed exposure for old but updated apps. However, insiders at Apple have apparently said that there are small chances of such a feature to ever happen. A huge minus for the AppStore.
I feel like AppStore is a bit like Romania(my home country) lately. A bit too bureaucratic, confronted with difficulties it hasn’t foreseen and somehow, while trying to fix these, making all the wrong choices and passing all the wrong policies. And, in both Romania and AppStore, the only ones having something to gain are the “big shots” with enough power and resources to not be affected by these policies. The small guy – the indie developer is the one getting hurt.
Update:
While writing the above rant, I realized that AppStore is no longer a working self-contained ecosystem. It used to be that an app could make it big inside the AppStore alone, without any exterior help. A couple of people would try it, then write down their ecstatic reviews, which led to other people trying the app and eventually it getting promoted in the top paid apps on the category. It’s no longer the case, an app that only markets itself on the AppStore (through the quality software, screenshots or description page) is now doomed to oblivion and no longer has a chance to make it big. There are too many apps for curious buyers to want to experiment, so there is no spark, no “fire starter” that could turn an iPhone app into a success. iPhone apps nowadays, in order to be successfull, need major exposure OUTSIDE the AppStore – and that is one really complex thing to do. Reviews on major blogs, iPhone ads on the ad networks, Google Adsense or exposure on other media have now become the main drivers for a iPhone app success. AppStore has grown into an organism unable to grow and live by itself and depending on outsiders to help him surive. A vegetable.
11 Comments to “Is the AppStore game still worth playing? – a story of success and failure”
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wow, it does seem it sucks a lot, thanks for the insights.
Did u ever look at the other platforms and how they compare? I’m asking because Apple people secretly own BlackBerrys and develop on them and BB people secretly own iPhones and develop on them – and of course they always say the other is better.
I started looking into Android development, but so far I’m not ecstatic.
I find the development process more awkward (XCode&ObjectiveC beats Android SDK in speed and intuitiveness).
Plus, I read that Android developers complain that it’s not a great market to be in – the prices ought to match the low ones on iPhone(or else customers complain), but with a lot less Android users, the numbers are way smaller, totaling in much smaller overall revenue.
Thanks for spamming me via SU.
Good write-up, a bit disappointing for me, the one who was thinking to jump onto the iPhone apps bandwagon. As I’m not in the game I can’t really comment.
Anyway, about Android, I think it was you who posted this – http://snurl.com/te6rz – to Twitter. That (splintering) is not such great news either, and I don’t really see Google acting fast about it.
I was hoping SU would use the internal user notification system and not spam you guys via email. If they did the later, then I’m utterly disgusted by StumbleUpon and promise never to use their “tell your SU friends” mechanism again.
Interesant articolul lui @alexbrie despre iPhone development, in special componenta financiara: http://www.alexbrie.com/archives/37
RT @xhr http://www.alexbrie.com/archives/37 Interesant articolul lui @alexbrie despre iPhone development, in sp.. http://bit.ly/08aPN5Q
@nerojenson Is the AppStore game still worth playing? – a story of success and failure http://www.alexbrie.com/archives/37
Great article Alex.
(I’ve been working on a similar piece.)
I know. I know. “Cry me a river”, but the fundamental issue in question here is whether the App Store is a viable marketplace for independent software development, not just yours and mine.
It seems like around the first year anniversary of the App Store there’s been a shift to the point where independent app developers can’t generate enough self-promotion to break through.
I’ve seen many articles that talk about the thriving market of quality apps with deep features and higher prices rather than the iTunes-promoted hit parade. e.g. http://www.marco.org/208454730 But all of the examples sited seem to be apps or devs that were on the App Store in its first 6 to 9 months or have gotten significant marketing help from Apple by being featured in one of the App Store lists or promotions. And even those that are featured have seen significant price erosion.
The game has fundamentally changed in the last 6 to 9 months. There were 32 pages of music apps (my category) in February 2009. Today there are 200 pages. That’s a 6 fold increase in the size of the marketplace in 10 months!
Up through about May 2009 pretty much all new apps in the category had a shot at entering the Top-100 chart based on the initial sales bump from being a new release. That is no longer the case. In most categories in the US App Store the Top-100-list has taken over the function of Top-20-list from a year ago. But there’s now no list performing the function of last year’s Top-100-list. So there’s nothing feeding the top list except Apple features and marketing and whatever the developer can generate.
The odd thing about the App Store unlike, for example, Amazon is that the App Store seems to have no “long tail”.
I would love to see some counter examples, but I’m not finding them.
Richard, this is one of the best comments I read so far. You can turn it into a great blog post just by copy-pasting it. You are right, the Top 100 list has taken over the function of Top 20 list of last year, but there’s no Top 500 or Top 1000 list to help discovery of niche apps. AppStore is not long-tail oriented, and this is a big problem. You either make it big or you don’t make it at all, there’s no middle layer for indie devs wanting to make a living off niche products.
[...] nice as these updates might be, because of Apple’s update-related policy which I already complained about, there’s no big incentive for me, as a developer, to push them right away to the customers. [...]
[...] caused by the significantly smaller number of updates pushed by developers following Apple’s AppStore policy change. It would be the single noticeable benefit of the policy [...]