Although the App Store is at high stakes with 10,000 apps and 3 Million downloads, it seems that esteemed developers are unhappy with the pricing of cheap apps.
Craig Hockenberry from Icon Factory, the developer of Frenzic and Twitterific, describes the issue with the pricing of 99c "Ringtone Apps" in a letter to Steve Jobs.
In this letter, he has mentioned the problem with 99c which he calls "ringtone apps" or "crapware". According to him, developer's are reducing the prices to stay in the competition and in the long run. He complains that it is difficult to get recognition in App Store without a great or "kickass" product.
Craig also states that, "this is ruining innovation as developers with great ideas don't have enough funding to make good apps and to get good sales, they have to sacrifice the quality of an app to make it cost 99c." and "I’m also concerned that this “making it up in volume” approach won’t last too much longer. With 10,000 apps in the App Store, it’s already a fricken’ cat fight to get into one of the top 100 spots. What’s it going to be like when there are 20,000 apps? Or 100,000 apps? Volume is going to get split amongst a lot of players, hopefully the number of devices/customers will increase at the same rate."
Though he does not offer any solution but rather writes, "you and your team are perfectly capable of dealing with it on your own terms."
What do you guys think? Will you be willing to pay more for the 'quality' apps or just go for the so called "crapware"?
Craig H. should get over it!
This is the American dream; make what you want, and sell it for whatever you want to!
The $0.99 apps make more advanced developers work harder to please the consumer….
This is the same reason why the iPhone went down in price, AND the same reason why the XBox 360 is half the price of the PS3!
It’s not like Microsoft is selling a crapgadget. They’re working harder than others to make the product available to more people, while keeping the quality.
In my opinion, $0.99 apps are the best things that could ever happen to the AppStore. Not to mention all the young teens with an iPod touch that aren’t old enough to get a job, so they have to do odd chores around the house to get a few bucks…. $0.99 makes sense for some apps, and, for some, it doesn’t make sense.
What about the free apps like Aurora Feint: the Beginning? That was a huge hit, and it took tons of effort to make, I’m sure.
The AppStore’s workin’ just fine. Besides, it’s digital games, and digital games don’t cost money to mass produce, and for every app, the developer gets a whopping %70.
Hey, Craig, I actually like a lot of the crapware on the AppStore. I mean, have you ever played simStapler or Cowbell?
Pay more?? Well …. yes AND no.
Sure I will pay for a great app. Like SplashID. It provides unique capabilities not usually found on smartphones.
Absolutely not!! I will never pay for something that should be included by default. That is just plain stupid guys!! Paying for ringtones? Jailbreaking to add new SMS tones? then MMS? Geeze, the list goes on and on and on. If Apple really wanted complete control, they would provide what should be included by deafult — then there wouold be no reason to go ‘outside the box’.