Windows Store Revenue Split

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/12/07/windows-store-revenue-split

by llambda • 15 years ago

96 47 15 years ago

consultutah3• 15 years ago

It will be interesting to see if the Windows Store takes off. I assume it will since it will be placed front and center in the user experience whereas the Windows Marketplace has always been impossible to get to.

A little competition for Apple is a good thing.

mcritz• 15 years ago

I'm a Mac/iPhone using designer, and super-excited about Win 8. I think you've got it backwards. Windows sells more than Mac OS, iOS, and Android combined.

consultutah3• 15 years ago

I absolutely agree. Because MS is putting this front and center, I think they have a good chance of making something huge out of it.

bad_user• 15 years ago

Reference please. If you're adding smartphones getting sold, I doubt it. It's not even close.

In Q2 2011 the numbers of PCs sold was ~ 85 million [1]. The growth rate over Q2 2010 is predicted to be only 2.3 %

For the same Q2 2011 - 428.7 million mobile devices have been sold, out of which 107 million were smartphones [2]. More interesting however is the growth rate of smartphones sales since Q2 2010: 74%

Now, the total number of Windows computers is bigger than all smartphones combined. However, Windows XP still has over 30% market share and Vista has over 10%. That's pretty bad for Microsoft. PCs aren't selling like they used to and users aren't upgrading much.

If Microsoft relies on tablet sales for increasing the numbers of devices with Windows 8, well you can probably count the millions of iPads sold on one hand (correction: according to Wikipedia since April 2010 that's 39.85 million - pretty good, however a small number compared to smartphones). You can also make a case that Microsoft will do deals with hardware makers, however there are good reasons why Android is so far unsuccessful on tablets and I'm not seeing Microsoft doing a better job.

[1] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1744216

[2] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1764714

recoiledsnake2• 15 years ago

>Another big difference from Apple. I wonder though, with the various antitrust agreements Microsoft has made around the world, whether they could even consider an Apple-style “if you use our store, all transactions must go through us” policy.

I believe that doesn't really apply to Windows 8 because you can sideload regular non-Metro programs all you want, just like on Windows 8. The Windows Store will still link to third party websites carrying non-metro apps.

The only hardware where you cannot do this will be Windows 8 ARM tablets. And since Windows is starting from zero in a market completely dominated by the iPad, I doubt anti-trust will be a concern anytime soon, considering that Apple is getting away with the lockdown and 30% cut of all in-app purchases despite being a near monopoly.

pavlov• 15 years ago

The only hardware where you cannot do this will be Windows 8 ARM tablets.

I don't think is set in stone yet. AFAIK, the classic Windows desktop and associated APIs like .NET have been ported to ARM. For example, Microsoft has showed desktop Office running on ARM last year.

There seems to be some internal debate at MS about whether to ship Win8 ARM as Metro only, with the classic desktop included, or even both (i.e. have two SKUs and let the OEMs choose).

jaredsohn• 15 years ago

>The Windows Store will still link to third party websites carrying non-metro apps.

Where have you heard this? I've heard speculation but nothing official.

smackfu• 15 years ago

The Apple philosophy on their store has always seemed much more in tune with $1 purchases than $20 ones. No one really needs refunds or trials for a $1 purchase.

jcdavis• 15 years ago

A lot of iOs apps basically already do this with "free"/"express" versions which have limited functionality and try to upsell. That would imply trials might not be an awful idea, given people are willing to put extra work into making free/gimped versions to get users hooked

ambirex• 15 years ago

The Mac App store has a greater variety in pricing. $4.99 seems to be a pretty popular price point.

frou_dh2• 15 years ago

Lack of proper trials on the App Store is a pain. I've bought several more expensive apps (with no separate lite versions) that turned out to be poor. I've "Reported a Problem" in iTunes and said I purchased them by mistake. Got a refund each time.

matwood• 15 years ago

If it was easy to contact the developer would you have tried that first? I ask because one of my biggest complaints with the App store is that it's nearly impossible to get user feedback without checking the comments everyday.

I have a low volume app and unless I check the comments I never know if someone had a problem. This is after putting my website in the app and on the app description screen on the store. Basically, if a user finds a bug I'd like to help them through it and/or fix it prior to them leaving a 1 star review that I may or may not see.

gecko2• 15 years ago

This cuts both directions, though: I am loath to spend more than $1 on an iOS application, without piles of good reviews, because there is no easy way to return it. I'd happily pay double on average for an iOS application if I got to use it for a day in exchange.

TheAmazingIdiot• 15 years ago

That's why I use Installous. It may make me a dirty pirate. So be it. I don't justify why I do.

Yes, it is the "hacked app store". It downloads the cracked archives from around the seedier parts (anon file dumps). And yes, you could download a nefarious piece of crapware. But that's a chance I take, considering I've only gotten 3 'pirate programs'.

If anything, I'd like to be able to develop with Linux for a jailbroken iPhone (3GS was handmedown and I jailbroke and unlocked it). There's no way at this time i can afford a Mac.

(note: without using a virtualized environment for OSX. I don't have the HD space.)

rmc2• 15 years ago

Where are you based? What territory? In the EU, the distance selling directive means that customers of online orders are entitled to a full refund with 7 days of purchase even if they have just changed their mind.

I've never invoked that law, but presume it would apply to software.

jbrennan• 15 years ago

For a $1 app? It's still astounding what agonizing great lengths a customer will go through in order to decide for or against a $1-5 app purchase. A latte apparently has higher value than a piece of software you'll likely use at least a little bit longer than your latte.

villaaston• 15 years ago

God, John Gruber is a twat

dbcooper2• 15 years ago

Will the Windows Store (on the desktop) always be limited to metro apps, or will it eventually include "normal" windows apps such as foobar2000, ccleaner etc?

Centralised package management and updates is the one new feature I most want from Windows 8.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Desktop is a legacy feature of intel Windows 8 computers only. That they are spending any time at all (bug fixes aside) on developing it is suprising. Going as far as to include a store for it seems like big overkill. Windows desktop future is on servers only.

recoiledsnake2• 15 years ago

The Windows Store will have desktop apps, but only with a link to the developer's site for download. Don't think there will be any package management or updates for desktop apps.

jccodez• 15 years ago

From this article, consider the source.. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-share-more-... Desktop (non-Metro-style) apps will be able to be promoted in the Windows Store if they meet Microsoft’s Desktop App certification requirements, and will be discoverable via the Windows 8 store. Windows 8 Desktop Apps will be neither licenesable nor downloadable (i.e., able to take advantage of the Windows 8 fulfillment service) from the Store.

dbcooper2• 15 years ago

That's quite disappointing - I would've thought that desktop app package management would be useful for small businesses and end-users.

aresant• 15 years ago

It's a nice idea conceptually but it's not addressing their key problem.

Microsoft's problem is that the Android install base is 8x larger and iPhone is 5x larger (1)

I get that they're trying to create an incentive to developers but the reality in mobile is that if you have limited development resources, you develop for iPhone & Android.

The promise of a little extra revenue when you push past $25k feels more like a favor to their big platform devs than it does a compelling reason for smaller devs to look to the Windows platform.

What's interesting is that MSFT gets how to use killer apps to power a platform - remember when they just flat out BOUGHT Bungie to keep HALO an XBOX exclusive?

That move made the platform.

A touch evil and anti-competitive yes, but come on MSFT get more creative about solving this problem.

(1)http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/11/...

consultutah3• 15 years ago

This is about the Windows Store (not MS's WP7 App store)

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

The "Windows Store" this article is talking about is the Windows 8 store. The install base of that will be larger than iOS and Android combined.

wmf• 15 years ago

That's not obvious; if the "post-PC" world has kicked in by 2013, Windows 8 may not be that big.

slig• 15 years ago

> I sure hope Apple is working on a way to enable free trials. The way it works on Windows Phone is great.

Is he being ironic? I've never used a Windows Phone, so I can't tell.

gecko2• 15 years ago

He's being quite serious. Windows 7 Phone apps can easily ship with a trial mode, which, when activated, allows you to use the full app. This is in contrast to iOS applications, where the trial apps are inevitably their own, completely separate applications (e.g., Angry Birds Lite). On top of the annoyance of simply having two applications to deal with, the separate applications, plus iOS sandboxing rules, mean that data from the trial application cannot be transferred to the full application in most circumstances.

Gruber has actually been quite bullish on Windows 7 Phone, and I think he's being completely serious about this statement.

gurkendoktor• 15 years ago

> On top of the annoyance of simply having two applications to deal with, the separate applications, plus iOS sandboxing rules, mean that data from the trial application cannot be transferred to the full application in most circumstances.

I could hack this using URL schemes within a couple hours, but admittedly it was not too much data (1kb? :)). I guess iCloud could make it even easier.

It still is a nightmare, usability wise. When you have an iPhone and iPad, iTunes is terrible enough even without application duplicates (Lite/Full and even HD sometimes).

mikerg87• 15 years ago

Multiple payment engines to me is a miss and not a hit. Creating an account and giving credit card info to get one more online merchant is a total pain.

With iTunes payments I am way up on my spend. I used to spend about $40/mo. With the apple handling magazine apps and all kinds of other payments for games like smurf village I spend easily $180 a month. Maybe the other way is good for developers but it blows for the consumer. Make it easy for me to give you money and I will.

msbarnett• 15 years ago

Yeah, I had the same reaction.

I'm sure the Magazine publishers would love a system where they can use their own payment processor to harvest a ton of details from you and that requires you to phone a call-center that mysteriously drops your call 3/4s of the time in order to cancel, but it's a big step backward for me as a consumer.

potatolicious3• 15 years ago

Actually I think this is a great idea - MSFT isn't saying they won't run their own payment engine, they're giving devs the choice on whether or not to use their payment engine.

This is far superior to Apple's current policy right now.

There are some pretty extreme advantages to tying yourself into the first-party payment engine. As you've brought up, it's way easier to separate me from my money if all I have to do is type in an ID that's already pre-registered to the device. There is in fact a large incentive for devs to go first-party.

But that's not true for all cases, and the edge cases really make iOS a painful platform to use at times. Amazon can't integrate their book store into the Kindle app because Apple wants their cut. As a consumer, I don't mind giving my CC info to Amazon and signing up for their account, and Apple's policy makes my experience as a user noticeably worse.

The incentives for most developers to go with the first-party payment solution is IMO enough - Apple's enforcement here just seems heavy-handed and unnecessary.

yahelc• 15 years ago

Gruber "Statement against interest" heuristic: If he says something an Apple competitor is doing is smart/good/right/better, it should be given extra credence.

laconian• 15 years ago

Or perhaps he considers it to be the lesser enemy of his mortal enemy?

ootachi• 15 years ago

I think this is more accurate. Gruber has generally been complimentary of Windows Phone compared to Android, but he doesn't believe it measures up to iOS.

guygurari2• 15 years ago

> I sure hope Apple is working on a way to enable free trials.

Official support would be nice, but can't developers already implement trials using in-app purchases? Download the app for free to get the trial, then pay to unlock the full version. Many apps are already using this approach.

barranger• 15 years ago

They can, however it really isn't as smooth an experience for the user and Microsoft knows this well.

One only has to look at how it works for Xbox Live Arcade games for an idea on how seamless this is. Give the user enough so that just as they are hooked, the trail runs out. One click of a button is the entire upgrade process. No dumping out to a different application (Marketplace) in order to purchase the full game, just a one second click of a button.

seanalltogether• 15 years ago

Not really. Apple disallows time bombs so you can only give people apps with reduced functionality. This works ok for games where you pay for level pack or app models that use "pay to remove advertising" schemes, but works badly for others.

potatolicious3• 15 years ago

As others have mentioned, Apple disallows time bombs, but the problem goes further.

Say you have an app, Foo. It's a reduced-function version and you want your users to buy Foo Pro. In order to use in-app purchases as an upgrade mechanism, you now have a bunch of customers running with Foo, except with Foo Pro functions unlocked. And you also have a bunch of customers running around with just Foo Pro.

The second part of this mess is that, unlike app purchases, users cannot see which in-app purchases they already own. If they ever get a new device, reinstall the app, etc etc, they have to "buy" the in-app purchase again to unlock the Pro version, and pray they don't get double-charged (it happens). As an app developer this is a support nightmare scenario.

This is not to mention that some users will mistakenly purchase the Pro version (and thus get double charged) when they get a new device, instead of downloading the regular version and "re-buying" the in-app purchase.

kpao• 15 years ago

Couldn't you use restoreCompletedTransactions to get the already purchased items?

guygurari2• 15 years ago

> As others have mentioned, Apple disallows time bombs

Yes, I did not know this. I don't understand the reason behind this rule, but as a user I find time-limited trials annoying. I prefer to have a trial version where I can use all the functionality but with a limited amount of data. For example, a task management app may restrict the number of tasks I can create. This way, hitting the limit is a good indication that the app is useful for me. Hitting a time limit doesn't actually mean anything, while crippling the functionality itself means I can't really try out the app.

> you now have a bunch of customers running with Foo, except with Foo Pro functions unlocked. And you also have a bunch of customers running around with just Foo Pro.

What I suggest is to not have Foo Pro at all. Just one version, Foo, which is free and can be unlocked.

> The second part of this mess is that, unlike app purchases, users cannot see which in-app purchases they already own.

I agree this is a mess, but remember that not too long ago there was no way to see app purchases either. So there is some hope this information will be added soon.

tonyedgecombe• 15 years ago

I'm not sure it makes commercial sense to offer trials on $1.49 software, you could loose a lot of impulse purchases.

Windows Store Revenue Split

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