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 Stephen Withers turns his gaze on the world of Apple, with
detours into other aspects of IT and communications as they catch his
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Technology news and Jobs 
Our Blogs Core Dump Apple iPhone apps a billion dollar business?
Our Blogs Core Dump Apple iPhone apps a billion dollar business? | Apple iPhone apps a billion dollar business? |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Thursday, 12 June 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 I'm less comfortable with the idea of basing estimates of the number of device users that will download software from the App Store on the proportion that use the iPhone for web browsing (98 percent), email (94 percent) and text messaging (90 percent). While that confirms the idea that people don't buy iPhones if they only want 'just a phone', I don't really see why a propensity to use the handset's features necessarily translates to spending money on extra software.Featured Whitepaper
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So if the average behaviour was to download say five free apps and only half a $US10 one (ie, only every other user actually buys software), that halves the market size in terms of revenue but triples in in terms of units. I admit to being a cheapskate. While I have been known to buy software - yes, and even to pay shareware fees - if there's a freeware alternative that comes close, that will usually do me. Then there's the rise of free web-based applications such as Google Apps, and the widespread consumption of free (though not always authorised!) content via the web and P2P networks. On the other side of the coin, we see the propensity of mobile phone users to pay for content and services. The ringtone market in the US alone is thought to be around $US500 million per year (down from $US600 million in 2006, but approximately $US2 per subscriber), and then there are the wallpapers, games, video clips and all the rest. That suggests to me that iPhone and iPod touch owners might be persuaded to drop a few dollars on applications, but you'd want to study the demographics before extrapolating from the ringtone (etc) markets. Will Apple move to constrain the supply of free software? |
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