
The iOS Economy, Updated - tim_sw
http://www.asymco.com/2018/01/08/the-ios-economy-updated/
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cableshaft
My understanding was that while there's more money being made in Apps, it's
getting more and more concentrated into less and less apps and larger and
larger companies, so that the overwhelming majority of apps released nowadays
make very little money.

Especially for independent developers I've heard there are much better
opportunities on other platforms, for the most part. For others here that are
still in iOS app development or know people still in it, is that the case?
I've been out of it for a few years, so I'm not really sure.

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nnd
What other platoforms have better opportunities for indie developers?

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cableshaft
For applications, I've heard more devs are going back to web first, but I'm
mainly familiar with the game scene, and indie game developers have had a lot
better luck with Steam, the Vita, and most recently the Nintendo Switch than
on mobile for the past several years.

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wlesieutre
That used to be the case for Steam if you could get your game in, but the
impression I’ve heard more recently is that it’s become more of a dumpster
fire of unfinished shovelware. Throw something together from unity asset store
pieces, call it early access, and see how many suckers you can get.

There are occasional breakout hits, but discoverability for indie titles is
minimal. Plus their revenue cut is (maybe not confirmed, but widely speculated
to be) the same as Apple’s 30%.

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adamqureshi
Why not try PWA. I built a marketplace app and used gravity forms and you get
camera in the browser. Unless you need device hardware, you can get away with
PWA. The web is much larger then app islands with 30% fees. Then the bi-weekly
updates. Then you get a message " this developer needs to update their app for
iOS (latest version) jesus.

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AndrewKemendo
_camera in the browser_

How so? Do you mean through UIImagePickerController or AVCaptureDevice?

Even with the latest iOS 11 release I haven't seen AVCaptureDevice available
to WebKit anywhere. getusermedia isn't supported and I've yet to see a
successful implementation of WebRTC on WebKit [1].

Maybe I missed something. Would be great to be able to do that finally.

[1][https://webkit.org/blog/7763/a-closer-look-into-
webrtc/](https://webkit.org/blog/7763/a-closer-look-into-webrtc/)

~~~
adamqureshi
we used gravity forms for one gig. On mobile a mobile browser say an iphone,
you can take snap a pic with a camera and upload / attach it and send it via
the form. That was our basic need / feature for this particular MVP.

i found this article in stakoverflow: In 2015 Google introduced a new approach
for developing web apps for Android: progressive web apps. One can create an
application that will look like a native application, will be able to use
device's hardware like camera and accelerometers, receive push notifications,
have a launcher icon, work in offline, store local data, etc.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Yea Android supports all of that including camera through getusermedia, iOS
doesn't.

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adamqureshi
So i tested the form. OnClick attach a pic / or take a pic in iOS i took a pic
and attached and on submit it sent the form with image to the email the form
was going too. Is that not it?

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AndrewKemendo
Yea that's UIImagePickerController, but obfuscated by whatever other wrapper
you're using. You can do that to transfer images or upload images through iOS,
basic file picker/transfer basically but doesn't invoke any other frameworks
or deeper integration. What you can't do is get the video feed into a WebKit
browser. It's a business decision Apple did to prevent image based Web Apps on
iOS. They want them all on native apps, though we might see it with WebRTC
integration.

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adamqureshi
oh gotcha, yes my use case was very simple. in iOS chrome / safari after
filling out basic form fields, name / email then upload pic / attach image (
pulls up the camera / attach image icons) Select or take a pic with camera
Upload / attach pic Send / Submit form.

That was all i needed. Then that image comes through email. For a local
messenger start up in NYC. Pick up / delivery. Customer needs upload a pic of
the bags being picked up then delivered to destination. All local / same day
stuff.

I maybe didn't need all the other stuff, just enough to solve this specific
problem in a mobile web app. Customer was happy with the demo i showed them.
Got the gig.

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debt
Great time to get into apps as everyone is so focused on Blockchain. By the
time that bubble implodes, investors will want a brand new, fresh, ready-to-
be-invested in app to throw their money at.

~~~
untog
Or you could just focus on making money, rather than endlessly chasing rounds
of investor money. Investment shouldn't be an end goal.

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padobson
A giant market with a single gatekeeper.

Does anyone have thoughts on alternative app stores like Google Play or
Amazon? The markets are obviously much smaller, but there's also much less
competition.

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paulcole
Doesn't Android have like 85% of the global market? Doesn't that make a Google
Play MUCH larger potential market?

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valuearb
No, because most of that volume is driven by super cheap phones, and their
owners spend far less on apps. iOS phones are all high end devices.

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melling
I'm not sure a lot of developers make money on iOS. I think it's now larger
companies. There are still millions of apps so discoverability is impossible.
You can't spend much to advertise a free app, and you can't really charge
money.

I wrote a simple Word Search app a couple months ago, localized it, and have
had zero downloads outside the US and Canada.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-
search/id1311744...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-
search/id1311744075?mt=8)

In 2010, I whipped up a quick little language app on Android and saw several
thousand global downloads within a month( there were about 10,000 apps at the
time).

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Terretta
> _... not sure developers make money on iOS ... it’s now larger companies_

So, just because the company is large, doesn’t mean an AI is writing the
software. The large company developers make money on iOS, as a steady paycheck
instead of a fingernail biter.

Given comparison between film and iOS industries, it’s a little like working
for Peter Jackson and Weta Digital instead of hoping to pull of the next
_Alive in Joburg_ at home.

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digleto
The market might be larger but it is becoming more and more difficult to be an
indie developer in the ever-increasingly saturated IOS App Store.

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ksec
Large majority of that are games. I wonder what % is that. 80? Or 90?

