

Apple: $10B In App Store Sales In 2013, $15B Paid Out To Developers To Date - ibsathish
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/apple-10b-in-app-store-sales-in-2013-15b-paid-out-to-developers-to-date/

======
thirdsight
Well my $50 of this was blown on my wife and kids' 3 iPads buying in app
upgrades for apps that were supposedly free but weren't and paying cash for
apps that supposedly block ads but don't and apps that transfer files that
don't work. Oh and games that crash all the time.

I suspect this is the case for a chunk of that $10B.

Really not impressed with the whole ecosystem and will not be investing
further in it.

Edit: to clarify. They didn't buy the apps, I did. No in app purchases were
made at all by anyone. The reviews are hopeless - unlike amazon for example
there are no reviews or ratings of the reviews so you cant determine the
difference between idiot reviewers and idiot developers until you've paid for
it. Ad blocking is to stop the piles of malicious and idiotic pages forcing
popups and apps down on you like its 1998 again. User alexpenny found a
reference to this below - thanks: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/shady-app-
install-ads-are-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/shady-app-install-ads-
are-automatically-redirecting-mobile-users-to-app-store-google-play/)

Edit 2: it appears HN has limited my efforts to defend myself in replies...

Edit 3: this is happening only on iOS devices. I don't have any android
devices. This does not happen on any of my desktop machines running Firefox +
AdBlock Edge. In fact I get no popups or install attempts at all and never
have done.

~~~
marknutter
There are plenty of sensible parental controls you can put in place. You have
nobody to blame but yourself.

~~~
thirdsight
I don't enforce parental controls (restrictions). They are too old for that
crap.

However I don't want adverts in web pages that have detected an iPad forever
redirecting to the app store. Then when you switch back to safari they reload
and back to the app store app again unless you are quick.

It's like the bad old days of the Internet again playing banner whack a mole.

~~~
alexpenny
This has been a recent phenomenon, that as of yesterday started gaining public
acknowledgment.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/shady-app-install-ads-
are-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/shady-app-install-ads-are-
automatically-redirecting-mobile-users-to-app-store-google-play/)

~~~
ceejayoz
Malicious ads on ad networks are _hardly_ a recent phenomenon.

------
davidjgraph
I think there's two, pretty obvious, ways to look at any marketplace, as the
consumer or the producer. Yes, consumers complain about the x,y and z aspect
of everything and anything in every marketplace.

But as a creator of software, you can't deny the figures. Compared to all
other marketplaces, both business to consumer and business to business, far
more revenue flows through Apple's, that's clear to see.

You have to be affected by this as a producer. Although, there's clearly heavy
competition and marketing is tough and expensive, there's a lot of money that
can technically be made.

I suspect the total Android marketplace revenues are accelerating quite hard
also, but this underlines another thing I'm beginning to see with
marketplaces, B2C can work, B2B seems much, much harder.

I've seen in two B2B marketplaces, Atlassian's [0] and the Google Apps
Marketplace [1] that the majority of customers of the core products stick to
that core product and avoid third-party products from the respective
marketplaces (that's a gut feeling for GAM, there are some figures for
Atlassian I saw end of last year confirming that). I seem to remember
Atlassian saying about $10M had been paid out to devs up to last October.

Yes, I know that businesses have far higher thresholds to trust third-party
additions, but I can't help feeling that if you're creating a product whose
main channel will be a marketplace, to favour B2C over B2B. I'm always saying
to think about B2B sales more, the margins are way better, generally, but this
is the first exception I've found.

The AWS marketplace [2] is something of a hybrid of the two modes. Anyone have
much experience of it? I've never used it myself.

[0]
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/home/confluence](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/home/confluence)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/](https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/)

[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace)

------
sz4kerto
$15B paid out to developers, while the ecosystem is the one what keeps an
$500B company on the top - this does not seem to be that much.

~~~
jp555
$15B for devs since the ecosystem was created (with most of the growth recent)
does not compare to the lifetime value investors place on the entire company.

$15B is two aircraft carriers. In less time to build one.

~~~
jokoon
you just compared aircraft carriers and a electronic/software company.

~~~
jp555
It's not a complete comparison, just comparing the impacts of deca-billion
capital expenditures.

But you're right they're completely different in a lot of ways. Apple "builds"
more than one aircraft carrier a year (in total cap ex spending), the US
Government takes ~10 years to spend the same money to build one.

------
smackfu
The rise of in-app purchase seems like quite a threat to Apple's ecosystem. If
the app is free and cross-platform, and you can buy the in-game currency on
whatever device, Android or iOS, where'd the lock-in go?

And since pretty much the whole top-grossing list is free with in-app-
purchase, that is definitely where most of this money is.

~~~
jbigelow76
If the cost of In App currency is the same between iOS and Android what is the
incentive for the user to put down their iOS device, pickup an Android device
to make the purchase, and then switch back?

Even if the developers segment their customers and make In App currency
"cheaper" on Android because Android users have a reputation of not paying as
much as iOS users it still sounds like a pain in the ass for marginal gain on
the end users part.

I can't imagine this happening often enough to threaten platform lock in or
meaningfully skew platform monetization statistics.

~~~
smackfu
I'm talking about the kind of platform lock-in where your next phone needs to
be an iPhone because your last one was, or where you buy an iPad because you
have an iPhone and you don't have to buy the apps again. That's the kind of
lock-in that is threatened by platform neutral IAP. You play Candy Crush on
your iPhone when you are out, but when you are home you play on the cheap
Android tablet you got because it has a bigger screen.

------
salient
Next year Android is poised to have a _1.9 billion_ user base [1], or roughly
three times that of iOS, and the difference is only going to get bigger as
Android with its higher penetration reaches new markets.

I think Apple's ecosystem will inevitably fall to second place in 2 years
time, when all developers wake up to the fact that Android will be by far the
world's largest platform (and yes, it should be better paid, too, by then, as
it already almost caught up with Apple in revenue/app).

[1]- [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/gartner-2-5b-pcs-tablets-
an...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/gartner-2-5b-pcs-tablets-and-mobiles-
will-be-shipped-in-2014-1-1b-of-them-on-android/)

~~~
sheetjs
From what I've seen, iOS users shell out much more money than android users.
Is there any poll or survey suggesting that android users are paying more for
apps and IAPs?

~~~
owenmarshall
As of November, Android developer revenue/dollar was $.19 to the dollar
compared to Apple.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-
differen...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-difference-
in-developer-revenue-between-android-and-ios-2013-11)

Facebook ad revenue on iPhones yields a 1,800% ROI over Android. And Facebook
ads on Android offer _a negative ROI overall_.

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/16/facebook-ad-profit-a-
stagg...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/16/facebook-ad-profit-a-
staggering-1790-more-on-iphone-than-android/)

So the Android ecosystem still looks very bad.

------
mrfusion
What does this work out to per developer? An average? Is there still a way to
make significant money selling apps?

~~~
poopsintub
There's a way to make significant money with free apps. You just need a decent
idea.

~~~
collyw
That's is the opposite of what one usually hears on HN.

"Ideas are a dime a dozen, its the execution that counts stupid...."

------
jokoon
Look how awesome apple is, and to argue about that, I'll just show how much
money it's passing around !

I don't really understand how relevant that is to the HN crowd, really.

People already have a $400 iPhone, with an expensive data plan, of course
they'll buy whatever it's compatible with.

If you sell glitter, there's no limit but the stars. People will buy anything
if it's under $10, so no surprise if so many people have iPhones.

What I'll always criticize, is the real amount of innovation that surrounds
the iPhone and the software that it runs. Of course it pays developers, but an
iPhone is just a very small wirelessly internet connected computer, with a
dedicated software store, and a short battery life. The software is the same
if not worse. The only difference is that Apple just had a business model for
an app market, and to be honest, compared to what freeware and open source
already offers, it doesn't feel attractive.

~~~
skywhopper
In what world is 9-10 hours of active use "short" battery life?

~~~
jokoon
yeah try that with a 2 year old battery

