Re:Apple App Store has paid devs over $70B since it's launch
by valuearb on Saturday June 03, 2017 @04:08PM
(#14478230)
The best news in this release is the 58% growth in subscription revenues. Since Apple has never had a system to allow paid upgrades, subscription is the best way to build a sustainable software business on the store. So this rapid growth indicates that customers are accepting subscription based software and that's great news.
I also posted this because on other threads some devs felt that because the market is top heavy that only huge developers like SuperCell and Kings were the beneficiaries. They felt that paying $99 a year and being forced to buy an Apple computer just weren't worth it. I wanted to point out that's not true and that strangely, despite my failure I'm an example of it.
My iOS app business has essentially been closed for over a year. I was never able to get revenues above $70k a year, and they've fallen over time, mostly because my main app is in a niche that's really hard to grow and frankly not worth the effort. And because my other ideas weren't successful, or I didn't do them well enough.
But still I've profited from the massive growth of the app store. I recently took a job for a company that has a large free app (as well as other internal apps used by employees). I'm now making over $130k a year (salary plus benefits) in one of the cheapest places in the country to live. Plus, I'm still making around $1500 a month from my existing apps, without doing any updates.
All the revenues from the growth in the App Store has created a lot of good jobs and developers benefit directly from them. I'm in particular grateful for the one it created for me, at a great company with outstanding benefits as well as management philosophy and business principles. For all the things we bitch about as developers, I have to point out that by comparison to most jobs it's a pretty awesome gig for those of us lucky enough to be employed as developers.
I also posted this because on other threads some devs felt that because the market is top heavy that only huge developers like SuperCell and Kings were the beneficiaries. They felt that paying $99 a year and being forced to buy an Apple computer just weren't worth it. I wanted to point out that's not true and that strangely, despite my failure I'm an example of it.
My iOS app business has essentially been closed for over a year. I was never able to get revenues above $70k a year, and they've fallen over time, mostly because my main app is in a niche that's really hard to grow and frankly not worth the effort. And because my other ideas weren't successful, or I didn't do them well enough.
But still I've profited from the massive growth of the app store. I recently took a job for a company that has a large free app (as well as other internal apps used by employees). I'm now making over $130k a year (salary plus benefits) in one of the cheapest places in the country to live. Plus, I'm still making around $1500 a month from my existing apps, without doing any updates.
All the revenues from the growth in the App Store has created a lot of good jobs and developers benefit directly from them. I'm in particular grateful for the one it created for me, at a great company with outstanding benefits as well as management philosophy and business principles. For all the things we bitch about as developers, I have to point out that by comparison to most jobs it's a pretty awesome gig for those of us lucky enough to be employed as developers.