The App Economy Will Change, Just Not Yet

Posted by jakeo on December 02, 2009

Recently, a friend and colleague of mine posted this to Twitter:


People complain about $2.99 iPhone games, and then they go buy $50 Wii and XBOX 360 games.less than a minute ago via TweetieRaven Zachary
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Which made me think about the consciousness into why people aren’t willing to pay for apps on their phones.

I think it has been the last n years of the ringtone economy (aka Dollar Store) which has put society in this mold. I can’t count how many people have looked at their phone bills and said, “I’m subscribed to WHAT ringtone service?!?!”

Ringtones screwed people, and being impulse buys, are akin to the things we buy at the checkout line at the grocery store and throw away after our children have played with them for an hour.

I would also argue that apps like iFart, which make someone $40,000 in two days, creates an entire goldrush phenomenon which gives us some less than stellar apps.

It’s also the marketing budgets behind console games, and a host of other factors, but I think we’re breaking out of the mold that some apps can provide valuable information and entertainment, it’ll just take a while.

–jake

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  1. CJ Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:22:50 UTC

    You’re just jealous you didn’t make $40k on your iPhone app… :)

  2. jakeo Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:15:49 UTC

    From Facebook: Manny Roldan
    Hey it’s like what social media is doing to friendships and communication. An indepth conversation must now fit into 140 characters

  3. jakeo Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:16:21 UTC

    From Facebook: Tracy Rolling
    So, cell phone apps. I’m not personally very hot on video games, so I can’t really speak to that. I did just pay for Boggle, which I think is great.

    People are willing to pay for applications, but the applications have to be either genuinely useful (Read it Later) or amazingly cool (Ocarina). and the people selling them have to help us find them. I’ve recently paid for a math flash card application and a period tracker. Erik shelled out quite a bit for his German-English dictionary and doesn’t regret it a bit.

    I imagine that one of the big reasons that people are less willing to pay for games on their phones is because the experience of playing a real bona fide video game on the phone is not so great compared to playing on a console. I wonder if social games, where you build and grow things, are doing better…. See More

    I could totally imagine paying to have Civilization on my phone…. does that make me an oldster?

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