Yesterday I ran into a news talking about how much Tapulous earned from selling its game through the Apple App Store.
At first I've immediately thought about how much is important to have a service like App Store behind. App Store is simply amazing, clear, easy to use, transparent to the end-user. I think that Apple did put a nail in the coffin with that web-service and, mostly, it's thanks to App Store if iPhone (and iPod touch) is one of the most sold smartphone nowadays.
So, I've exchanged some emails with some friends of mine discussing about which probably is the must-have feature in order to reach similarly goals. The service itself? The quality of the software? The brilliantness of the software? The popularity of the service? The way a product is advertised?
Well, at first I was one of the guys that think that the quality of the software is the primary quality in order to achieve popularity and make some money, but after having seen articles like
this I began to think that probably quality isn't one of the most remunerative features a product must have.
I think a software has to be brilliant at first. It has to promote an "idea" that no other softwares have ever promoted so far.
However this is a concept way too intrigued to be faced into 5-mins blog post.
But, as you might know, App Store is available only for iPhone OS. So I've started thinking about the possibility to have a similar centralized store available for every other platform.
Before going through that argument, let's think about what we already have.
Linux, for instance, already has a similar place for applications. Almost every distributions have a repository (or more) where applications are stored and available to users. The way the applications are "placed" inside such repositories are invisible to the end-user (Debian stores precompiled and prepared .deb files, Gentoo stores only ebuilds and so on) but every distros have a common way to dig into them.
Windows, in controversy, has no repository. Everything is entrusted to the search engines, local resellers or magazines.
Mac OSX places itself onto an halfway point. There are services like
Version Tracker or
MacUpdate that provides similary features but the user is still forced to open a browser in order to download an app. Furthermore they simply provide a nice way to search through thousands of apps but they don't provide a way to directly upgrade an app. At least, mac users, have notifications.
Another aspect of this discussion is spinning around the security issues. Windows, for the example, is the biggest hatch for warez programs. So, what's the point in providing such a service if everyone uses channels like Torrent (or whatsoever) to gather cracked apps?
Well, this already happens on iPhone/iPod touch. There's a process called Jailbreak that allows users to install unsigned apps, cracked apps. This way, the App Store concept goes to Hell.
Another thing is the real gain for developers compared with how much Apple (for Apps Store) earns by keeping their software in its own showcase.
Apple keeps for itself the 30% of the of the revenues, 70% goes to developers.
But, how much is 30%? This means that if Tapulous earns 1 million dollars a month, more then 400'000 dollars goes to Apple by doing nothing but allowing Tapulous to lay out their app. That's an huge slice, isn't it?
With such earnings, there will be competition over the world. There's no way Apple will provide Windows software through its channels, so Microsoft is forced to open and propose an identical service by using another name, obviously. This will surely drive into endless discussions, few software houses will put their software on a growing "app repository" with the result of having nothing changed.
In the hypothetical scenario where everything is set up, will users pay for applications if there was a common showcase right away? I don't think so.
I may be prejudiced towards Windows users (I was on them, long time ago) but I think the mentalities are quite different.
The million dollar question is: Is it really possible to give Computer users a service like App Store?
