
The App Store Is a Classic Example Of A Broken Business Process - vaksel
http://thecodist.com/article/the_app_store_is_a_classic_example_of_a_broken_business_process
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racy_rick
Appstore: Developer=70%, Apple 30%

KindleStore: Writer 30%, Amazon 70%

note: [http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/07/amazon-
takes-70-percent-o...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/07/amazon-
takes-70-percent-of-kindle-newspaper-revenues/)

~~~
mahmud
This weekend NPR's "On The Media" had this sad story about a Dallas Texas
newspaper owner who was willing to bite the bullet and accept Amazon's 30%
offer to his content if they dropped their other requirement: their right to
re-license his content to others, on any medium, for the rest of eternity, for
free!

That's right; they will pay the paper 30% for each content on the kindle, but
they can sell that very content in other mediums, including print, and he gets
nothing. The balls on Bezos!

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karl11
This is a good analysis, but I'm still curious why Apple, known for excellence
in every area, including customer service, has such a shoddy app review
process. In my opinion, it just doesn't fit within the way they approach
everything else.

~~~
kailoa
It's a completely separate entity from their main product lines.

Until there is financial incentive to fix it, change will be slow. This
includes the emergence of serious alternatives. Serious being defined as
platforms that make developers money. So far, Nokia, Palm and BB and even
Android don't count (though they may in the future).

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jhancock
I thought Apple hit a billion downloads. How is that broken? I can certainly
see why some developers find Apple's approach difficult. But Apple is hardly a
monopoly (yet). If you don't like Apple, do something different.

~~~
jonursenbach
It's a broken model if you're pissing off the people who helped you obtain
that billion downloads, and subsequent 30% profit/sale.

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jonursenbach
This is very reminiscent of what I did when I worked at AmateurMatch.

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TweedHeads
No.

It is a new business that had an unexpected acceptance and growth, where there
is a lot of subjective human involvement in the approval process, and a lot of
issues dealing with banking systems all around the world.

Stop making it look like a disaster because it is not. It is the greatest
example of what can be done in online purchase and delivery of software, be it
games or whatever.

Most software companies are just jealous they didn't come up with that idea
first. A working idea to be more precise.

Clear? So stop the FUD now.

~~~
jodrellblank
No.

Selling software downloads is not a new business, though it maybe for Apple.
They had predictions for numbers of iPhones sold, and know in realtime how
many developers are signing up. Even if it is unexpected growth, that's part
of the problem discussed in the blog - if they had good management and
processes, they could scale well.

There ought be no subjective involvement in the approval process if it's to be
fair to all developers. A checklist of what to avoid doing so your app can be
approved has been long called for - they are not judging apps by quality after
all, but against a list of restricted points such as no-scripting, no-
undocumented-API-calls and others. This list is currently secret and maybe
even ill-defined which could lead to a requirement for subjective decisions -
but again that's part of the problem discussed - a good process would help and
make that go away.

 _Stop making it look like a disaster because it is not._

It's one of the crummiest areas of the whole Apple-world border, the only
worse area I can think of right now is the failed launch of the new
.mac/mobile me(?) last year.

 _It is the greatest example of what can be done in online purchase and
delivery of software_

Hardly. There are any number of small shareware sites where you can
pay/download/use in a few minutes, and never have to deal with a problem that
the developer has solved but the fix is stuck in an inscrutable service for an
unpredictable amount of weeks for an unknown review process. Loads of open
forums where the developers are allowed to reply to negative feedback.

 _Most software companies are just jealous they didn't come up with that idea
first._

Maybe, maybe not - either way, utterly irrelevant.

 _Clear? So stop the FUD now._

I don't know if there's a common term for anti-FUD (hype doesn't quite cover
it), but your post would be an example of it. Positive Blustering, perhaps?

~~~
sker
_I don't know if there's a common term for anti-FUD (hype doesn't quite cover
it)_

Some people have a name for this particular case:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field>

