Thread: How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?
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ysss is offline ysss
2009-08-17 , 17:50
Posts: 4,384 | Thanked: 5,524 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ ˙ǝɹǝɥʍou
#95
Originally Posted by fms View Post
As to the fabled 50k iPhone applications, most of them are probably garbage, making commercial iPhone development kind of a lottery: your chances of reaching commercial success selling iPhone apps are random and pretty low. So, the "strategy" there is to create scores of small silly apps and sell them for $1, with no support implied. This is kind of like buying a bunch of cheap lottery tickets hoping that one of them will win. The similar pattern can be observed in pre-iPhone app stores like Handango. Believe me, this pattern has nothing to do with how an average developer would like to market his applications.
So how does the 'average developer' would like to market his applications anyway?
( Slowly? To a smaller audience? -- sorry, jk )

I think the key to AppStore is simply economy of scale. You tap into that, then you unleash a natural force that -everyone- can benefit from. The result is greater than the sum of its parts.

AppStore's commission is a flat 30% whereas Handango starts at 50% if your sales is below $250k. You only get the discount to make their commission at 30% on your sales above $1M.

AppStore's approximate number of users is probably in the 10M range. Considering they've sold above 40M devices (both iphone and touch). Handango, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing much lower than that judging by the unit prices.

Bejeweled 2
AppStore: $2.99
Handango: $9.99

Encyclopedia Britannica World Traveller:
AppStore: $7.99
Handango: $19.99

Pocket Informant (PIM):
AppStore: $12.99
Handango: $29.99

Notice any trends?

Can we finally leave "why Maemo is not an iPhone" stuff to the few diehard iPhone owners here and move on to something more constructive?
It's kind of hard to leave the comparison to iPhone or its ecosystem when it's in the thread title.
 

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