

Apple is finally allowing developers to sell their apps to other developers - rmah
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/11/apple-is-finally-allowing-developers-to-sell-their-apps-heres-why-and-how/

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dsirijus
This deceptively little tidbit of change is probably the most important news
on frontpage right now.

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mrspeaker
Arrrgh! Sorry - I impulsively down-voted you out of sheer bewilderment that
anyone could possibly think that selling an app is more important than a
systematic and widespread government invasion of civilian privacy. But your
comment is not (necessarily) a troll, just different to my opinion - so I
should have just replied saying so instead of disagreeing via rage-downvote.

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untog
_impulsively down-voted you out of sheer bewilderment that anyone could
possibly think that selling an app is more important than a systematic and
widespread government invasion of civilian privacy_

But not _every_ story about PRISM is important or even telling us anything
new. Reflexively upvoting any story that has to do with the government being
"bad" is just going to fill the front page with a lot of repeated info (at
best) and speculative nonsense (at worst).

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randallsquared
...and this neatly explains the "all politics, all the time" nature of HN for
the past week. :/

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CJefferson
This is great. I have a single free app I have no interest in updating, but
which I am forced to pay apple £60/year to keep on the store, both for new and
old users. Now I can 'park' it with a friend still involved in iOS
development.

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epoxyhockey
I did an app transfer yesterday and it was a shockingly smooth & painless
process. The system updated in just a couple of hours.

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ihuman
Do the users get some sort of notification of the change, or is the only
difference to them the "made by" label in the App Store?

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epoxyhockey
As far as I can tell, the only thing the users will notice is a change in name
of the _Seller_ in the app store listing if they care to notice; there is no
active notification to users. The copyright info and date last updated remain
the same.

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phil
I'm curious what people think of existing marketplaces.

If you're thinking of selling an app, do you feel like the tools are there to
find buyers and perform the transaction?

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programminggeek
Easy app transfer is potentially a huge secondary market for app developers
and the market for "app flipping" could become a very lucrative opportunity
for devs.

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r00fus
How so? What profits could a flipper look forward to?

In other words, does "app flipping" exist in the Android space (which, given
the lack of restrictions, would allow/encourage this)?

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programminggeek
Well there is money to be made on either side. You, could as a dev get good at
at building apps quick and turning around and selling them at some potential
revenue multiple. As a buyer, you might be able to buy something cheap that
pays for itself over some short period of time if maybe you are decent at
marketing or something.

I think it exists in both iOS and Android. I haven't looked into it enough to
see which is more valuable, but the possibilities are there.

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megablast
You could always sell your app, I had to do this a number of times, when I was
working on apps for other companies. It just involved a few emails in the
past.

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smackfu
Did each app have its own developer account? I think the hard part was if you
had three apps and wanted to move one to a different developer.

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quadrangle
The idea that this is Apple's business whether to allow shows the whole thing
to be corrupt.

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youngerdryas
This title is not accurate. You could always sell your code and assets but you
would have to recompile and resubmit whereas now it stays live through the
transfer.

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mikeash
Depends on what you consider to be the "app". The procedure you describe means
the app gets a new name, a new bundle ID, means that no existing purchasers
get a copy of the newly submitted app, no automatic upgrades, user settings
are not migrated, no reviews transfer over, etc.

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youngerdryas
Yes, this is definitely better for the users as well as the developers.

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fakeer
And they get a % cut of transfer _sale_ amount, just like 30 or 33% or so of
all app purchases by end users?

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_pmf_
They've given up on thinking the iPhone is something special. Rightfully so.

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tvon
Right, I'm sure that's how the decision making process went.

